Follow these conventions when adding or editing in-game text. Theses conventions apply to the default US English language, translations should follow guidelines from /lang/notes/ if there are any for the language in question, which can be different that the ones here.
- Use US English spelling.
- The exception here is for some character dialogs, as some characters can use other than US English dialects. For example, Exodii/Rubik uses Cockney dialect in combination of Early Modern English.
- Use double sentence spacing after periods. This means that a period that ends a sentence should be followed by two spaces. If the sentence is the last in the block of text, there should be no spaces following it.
- Translations may not always use two spaces, so make sure to use a translation wrapper,
_(" ")
, when appending spaces in code.
- Translations may not always use two spaces, so make sure to use a translation wrapper,
- Use second person point of view (eg. "you").
- The names of stats, traits/mutations, scenarios, professions, backgrounds, proficiencies, martial arts, and Compact Bionics Modules (CBMs) should be in title case. This means that each word should be capitalized unless it is an article, preposition, or conjunction.
- Items and entities with proper noun names should also be in title case.
- This includes: Cataclysm, Discontinuity (an event in Aftershock), Exodii, Marloss, Mycus, Autodoc, Kevlar and Nomex.
- Unique currencies, such as "merch", should be written lowercase unless the name includes a proper noun, such as in "Hubcoin".
- All other item and entity names should be in all lower-case letters.
- Use the serial comma (Oxford comma).
- Use ellipsis character (…) instead of three dots (...). Replace instances of three periods with the dedicated Unicode character for ellipsis, namely U+2026. As to the specifics of using it:
- No spaces before it and one space after it.
- This character does not end a sentence, use ellipsis followed by a period
….
when ending a sentence with ellipsis.
- Brand names do not need to be avoided as we are covered under fair use. However, as CDDA-Earth is a parallel universe, nonexistent brands are also allowed.
- Don't avoid using Unicode letters, which includes proper names and alphabets when needed, or symbols as ® or ™.
- Always make sure that all descriptions follow a sentence case, i.e. they start with a big letter and end with a full stop, even if they are just for testing purposes (they can still appear by mistake and can be seen in debug menus).