General Writing Style Guide

We all have our different ways of writing. But a game needs a unified style. So here's a brief rundown of all the conventions we use when writing. Breaks from these conventions in the text can occur but are, in essence, errors and need to be fixed. The rules below are essential for text processing inside of the game.

1) Encoding

The game uses UTF8 for all text, with no exceptions. If you don't know how to handle encoding, write in pure ASCII and ask someone to edit any unusual symbols (such as —, Hebrew, Greek, Sanscrit, non-standard Latin related characters, etc.). The game's suggested writing tools are, Notepad++ (technical/finalised writing) and Grammarly (draft). The usage of tools with heavy autocorrect (such as Open/Libre Office Writer and Google Docs) is strongly discouraged.

2) Grammatical person and tense

The game is written in second-person present-tense narration in regards to the main character. The game only ever addresses the character, never the player. It minimises instances where the character is told what she feels or thinks unless it is relevant to game mechanics. The narration never addresses anything the character is not experiencing directly; that is to say, it is strictly limited to her perception.

Bad:
She entered the kitchen and took a look around, suddenly craving a snack from the fridge.

Good:
 You enter the kitchen and take a look around.

3) Dialect

The game is written in British English and should use spelling proper for British English. That's all — no ifs or buts. It is worth noting that the free version of Grammarly will correct dialect mistakes.

Bad:
Nearby, a street food vendor passes a bag of french fries to a customer.

Good:
Nearby, a street food vendor passes a bag of chips to a customer.

4) Vocabulary

While the game aims to use a broad vocabulary, pure purple prose should be minimised. Neologisms should be minimised as well, within reason. 

Before you try to make your own word for something, first consider a few other options.

• Firstly, does a word with this meaning already exist, even if it is not widely used;
• Secondly, if an appropriate loan word can't be adapted in its place, particularly words from major religions or influential ancient languages;
• Thirdly, if all else fails and a neologism is required, it should have a properly justified etymology or source.

Bad:
Bedeme Bussuk - a legendary city under the waves.

Good:
Atlantis - a legendary city under the waves.
Theogatton - a cat-shaped god.
Karma - how the thoughts of others affect us.

5) Capitalisation

The game uses proper capitalisation. Note that this includes the capitalisation of relevant proper nouns (list of setting specific proper nouns coming soon). No stylistic capitalisation is used, not even in dialogue.

Bad:
This is MADNESS; you'll get All of us Killed!

Good:
This is madness; you'll get all of us killed!

6) Punctuation

A somewhat reduced pool of punctuation marks was adapted for the game:

• Due to locking into this early, the game uses simple/dumb quotation marks (") and apostrophes ('). Variants of these symbols (“, ”, ’, etc.) shouldn't be used. Quotation marks are used exclusively for dialogue, while apostrophes are used for quotations within the narrative.
• The ellipsis symbol (…) is not used. Instead, we use a series of three periods (...).
• The joint exclamation-question mark (⁉) and question-exclamation mark (⁈) are not used. Instead, either of those should be written as two separate symbols (!? or ?!). The double question mark (⁇) is not used at all. 
• A short dash (-) is used only to combine words. Otherwise, a long (em) dash is used (—).

Punctuation gimmicks are only allowed in non-generic dialogue (that is, dialogue that does not fall under idiolectic filtering). They must be consistent with the writing style of a given character if this character is re-occurring.

Bad: 
 “This yellow—black potion - what is it⁈ Who… or what is this "alchemist" that gave it to you⁇”

Good:
"This yellow-black potion — what is it?! Who... or what is this 'alchemist' that gave it to you?"

7) Exceptions

Instances of writing within the game expressed through the document or laptop systems are not required to follow the rules noted above. They are, in essence, accurate depictions of writing found in the in-game world. As such, they might be divergent in their format or dialect.