Guidelines for In-house Material

See also: The more strongly applicable rules and recommendations.

General guideline about initialisms

G1. Initials should not have periods between them.

Guidelines for using quotation marks

G2. Quotation marks should be sexless when indicating computer language or scripted literals, or when appearing in computer-generated output (from a console, for example.)

G3. Quotation marks should be sexed when appearing in general non-fiction or fiction text.

G4. Quotation marks should be consistent throughout a document—mixing of sexless and sexed quotes, or double and single quotes is discouraged.

It is acceptable to include a double quoted phrase within a single quoted phrase in ordinary text. In programming language text, the opposite is also allowed.

Other computer language listing guidelines

G5. Monospaced text should be used for all computer language, script or console fragments.

Monospaced text may be avoided for stylistic reasons—in this case a distinct proportional font may be subsituted. A bold or sans-serif variant of the ordinary body text font is suggested.

G6. Console-generated text should be distinguished from computer script or parameters typed by the user by using a bold face for the latter.

If the prompt is a valid prefix to the script, it may also appear in bold face. This is the case on Acorn and RISC OS computers for the OS Supervisor script.

G7. Keywords in computer language listings or fragments should be set in a bold face.

General guideline about nested brackets

G8. Nesting of brackets of any kind outside a computer language listing or fragment is strongly discouraged.

Guideline about type choice for computer listing comments

G9. Computer language comments should be set in an oblique variant of the program listing font or a closely matching visual equivalent.

If proportional text is used for computer program listings, then the use of a roman or serif variant of that font is preferred.

Last updated: Sunday 25th July 2003