Talk:Story Style

Howdy, world!

Note: Whereas some languages, like French and German, have standardized forms governed by regulatory bodies, English is in many ways a free-for-all. The laws presented below therefore reflect my (Mrgirlpluggedout) own personal preference.

Since no one has died and made me King of Soylent, my opinion does not outweigh the opinion of others. You are most welcome to add your own laws and examples to this document. I simply ask that instead of changing something that already exists, please make your reservations known in [this] talk page. Thank you, and happy soylenting!(Mrgirlpluggedout)

Mrgirlpluggedout, I began refining this document and moved your comments here. I'd like to develop this as a guide for editors to use to get on the same page regarding story format. mrcoolbp (talk) 23:27, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The only thing I've changed so far (also added some things) is the formatting of quotes. LaminatorX seems to think (and I agree) that quotes are not necessary surrounding the entire "article" do to the colon in "[submitter] writes:" and the paragraph structure. It certainly makes quotes (and subsequent nesting quotes) a lot easier to deal with. mrcoolbp (talk) 04:43, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I would appreciate guidance on acceptable story submissions in this article. What style does Soylent News hope to portray? Gritty broadsheet? Cerebral monthly? I believe the current content is good, but if we're not careful we could end up trying to rewrite The Elements of Style. AnonymousCoward 4:42, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I think this is open to interpretation and varies based on the story. You can of course check out the Submission_guidelines. mrcoolbp (talk) 20:18, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Random suggestions

Reading through this, I figured I'd just offer some suggestions, but I didn't really want to edit the page.

• Regarding US/UK spelling, the text thus far says that the summary should be consistent. My concern is that the summary is often the product of not just the submitter, but also the editor. I'd suggest that the submitter's spelling take preference, and any text bolted on by the editor follow their style. Although, to be frank, my greater preference is that you ditch the consistency requirement altogether -- there's no real reason why UK and US spellings can't be intermixed, aside from being jarring to OCD people. (It'd be jarring to me, but I'd get over it).
• Another subpoint in US/UK agreement is to decide how to capitalize acronyms. The British have been going down the road of not capitalizing acronyms but capitalizing initialisms, e.g., "Nasa" and "HTML". I would vote American in this case; I've never quite seen a reasonable rationale to do that to acronyms.
• I would suggest generalizing the "Betteridge's Law of Headlines" section to "Headlines", making Betteridge a subpoint, and addressing what a good headline is and isn't. I'd include things like clickbait, and the bizzarre tendency of some people to try to come up with alliterated headlines.
• I'd consider adding a section talking about creating a good summary of the article. Soylent is REALLY bad with this; there's WAY too much raw copy/paste going on from the article to the "summary" which isn't a summary at all. It's bordering on copyright infringement in some cases.

I probably have more random thoughts somewhere, but it's late and I'm tired. :) Leebert (talk) 02:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)