General style notes
Magnificent Nose has had writers in Australia, the United States, and Korea. Since the editor started this site as a way to keep busy in between freelance editing projects, best practice with spelling and hyphenation is to consult references for the writer’s home country.
Dictionaries of choice:
- Unites States dictionary: Merriam-Webster
- British dictionary: Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
Punctuation
Spaces after a period: one.
Elipses: Three periods, no space before, with a space included after. i.e., “The end of all things… is coming.”
Hyphens: For em/en dashes and ranges of numbers, there should be no spaces on either side of a hyphen–think of a hyphen where there will be words on either side of it.
Punctuation or hyperlink after a formatted word: Formatting includes only the word(s), unless part of the term being emphasized, or part of a title. (i.e.,Yahoo!, or “I can’t believe I forgot that fact, and had to use Google!)
(Based on CMOS, 14ed)
HTML and formatting
Note to editors: Please use the “Text” editor in WordPress where possible. The “Visual” editor adds additional HTML and non-breaking spaces. It also sometimes concatenates subsequent paragraphs.
To fully utilize the site’s style sheet, use tags such as <strong></strong> and <em></em>, not <bold></bold> and <i></i>.
Numerals: Spell out numerals where feasible (“one”, not “1”). Numbers at the start of a sentence to be spelled out, except for years or as part of a proper name. (See AP entry, “Numerals”.)
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