Formatting Guidelines
From DPCanadaWiki
Formatting Guidelines refers to a document that contains all the default instructions and standards for formatting (such as markup for italics, illustrations, footnotes, and poetry) in rounds F1 and F2. These standards apply to all projects, unless specifically overridden by instructions from the Project Manager in the Project Comments or Project Discussion.
For complete clarity, the PM may make any exceptions to these Guidelines in the Project Comments, and the PPer can make any changes deemed appropriate in the PP stage. The only principle for the PPer to follow is consistency--either make the same consistent change throughout the book, or consistently stick to the original treatment of the author.
You can access the Formatting Guidelines from FAQ Central and from any Proofing Interface window.
See also Proofreading Guidelines.
Contents |
The Primary Rule
"Don't change what the author wrote!"
The final electronic book seen by a reader, possibly many years in the future, should accurately convey the intent of the author. If the author spelled words oddly, we leave them spelled that way. If the author wrote outrageous racist or biased statements, we leave them that way. If the author puts italics, bold text or a footnote every third word, we mark them italicized, bolded or footnoted. We are proofreaders, not editors. (See Printer Errors/Misspellings for proper handling of obvious misprints.)
We do change minor typographical conventions that don't affect the sense of what the author wrote. For example, we rejoin words that were broken at the end of a line ( End-of-line Hyphenation). Changes such as these help us produce a consistently proofed version of the book. The proofreading rules we follow are designed to achieve this result. Please carefully read the rest of the Proofreading Guidelines with this concept in mind. There is a separate set of Formatting Guidelines. These guidelines are intended for proofreading only. A second group of volunteers will be working on the formatting of the text.
To assist the next proofreader, the formatter, and the Post-Processor, we also preserve Line Breaks. This allows them to easily compare the lines in the text to the lines in the image.
About This Document
This document is written to explain the formatting rules we use to maintain consistency when formatting a single book that is distributed among many volunteers, each of whom is working on different pages. This helps us all do formatting the same way, which in turn makes it easier for the Post-Processor who will complete the work on this e-book.
It is not intended as any kind of a general editorial or typesetting rulebook.
We've included in this document all the items that new users have asked about while proofreading. If there are any items missing, or items that you consider should be done differently, or if something is vague, please let us know.
This document is a work in progress. Help us to progress by posting your suggested changes in the Documentation Forum.
Project Comments
On the main Project Page, there is a section called "Project Comments" containing information specific to that project (book). Read these before you start proofreading pages! If the Project Manager wants you to do something in this book differently from the way specified in these Guidelines, that will be noted here. Instructions in the Project Comments override the rules in these Guidelines, so follow them. There may also be instructions in the project comments that apply to the formatting phase, which do not apply during proofing. Finally, this is also where the Project Manager may give you interesting tidbits of information about the author or the project.
Please also read the Project Thread (Forum). The Project Manager may clarify project-specific guidelines here, and it is often used by formatters to alert other formatters to recurring issues within the project and how they can best be addressed. (See the next section).
On the Project Page, the link 'Images, Pages Proofread, & Differences' allows you to see how other volunteers have made changes.
Forum/Discuss This Project
On the proofreading interface page (Project Page) where you start formatting pages, on the line "Forum", there is a link titled "Discuss this Project" (if the discussion has already started), or "Start a discussion on this Project" (if it hasn't). Clicking on that link will take you to a thread in the projects forum dedicated to this specific project. That is the place to ask questions about this book, inform the Project Manager about problems, etc. Using this project forum thread is the recommended way to communicate with the Project Manager and other volunteers who are working on this book.
