11.2. Guidelines

To promote consistency between the myriad authors of the FreeBSD documentation, some guidelines have been drawn up for authors to follow.

Use American English Spelling

There are several variants of English, with different spellings for the same word. Where spellings differ, use the American English variant. color, not colour, rationalize, not rationalise, and so on.

Note:

The use of British English may be accepted in the case of a contributed article, however the spelling must be consistent within the whole document. The other documents such as books, web site, manual pages, etc. will have to use American English.

Do not use contractions

Do not use contractions. Always spell the phrase out in full. Don't use contractions would be wrong.

Avoiding contractions makes for a more formal tone, is more precise, and is slightly easier for translators.

Use the serial comma

In a list of items within a paragraph, separate each item from the others with a comma. Separate the last item from the others with a comma and the word and.

For example, look at the following:

This is a list of one, two and three items.

Is this a list of three items, one, two, and three, or a list of two items, one and two and three?

It is better to be explicit and include a serial comma:

This is a list of one, two, and three items.

Avoid redundant phrases

Try not to use redundant phrases. In particular, the command, the file, and man command are probably redundant.

These two examples show this for commands. The second example is preferred.

Use the command svn to update your sources.

Use svn to update your sources.

These two examples show this for filenames. The second example is preferred.

… in the filename /etc/rc.local

… in /etc/rc.local

These two examples show this for manual references. The second example is preferred (the second example uses citerefentry).

See man csh for more information.

See csh(1).

Two spaces at the end of sentences

Always use two spaces at the end of sentences, as this improves readability, and eases use of tools such as Emacs.

While it may be argued that a capital letter following a period denotes a new sentence, this is not the case, especially in name usage. Jordan K. Hubbard is a good example; it has a capital H following a period and a space, and there certainly is not a new sentence there.

For more information about writing style, see Elements of Style, by William Strunk.

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For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.

For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.