This issue is too long!! Split into manageable chunks!
Start by prioritising what, exactly, I need to do. Writing is a huge subject!
"I just let it run, because you can always rewrite, check things, find the right way to say things. If you sit and plan, you get stuck in the planning. When you’re writing a book, I find my fingers just start doing it." (Terry Prachett, source)
Just-in-time and revise as-you-go — easy to understand for beginners and just enough for serious writing. Do the next right thing. Pick a style and stick with it! You can cherry-pick some of the styles you prefer, but it's easier to pick one style guide as a base.
Decide a general tone, style (academic? head first) as a standard default. This can always be extended or updated for child themes.
Writing must be
Easy to understand and reckon with (the stupid version of future me)
Easy to write in Markdown (including extra html markup)
Work in any version of Markdown (Stick with CommonMark)
Easy to extend (for specific needs)
Looks pretty
Don't be boring
I don't need to think of all this upfront, as the main things I'm using this repo for is simple articles, the anki tool, possibly a faq or simple documentation, someday a book ... so on. It just needs a simple guideline that's reasonably fun to read (and not a wall of text).
Start super small, super simple and build from there.
[ ] A lot of documentation and writing sucks
[ ] Don't make me think, just enough information (and no more)
[ ] When to use italic to highlight terms (or places, authors, titles)
[x] Bear in mind that serif fonts are way better than sans-serif fonts for this.[^1]
I'm finding it hard to find examples in context online: the way it's actually written in the book. There's lots of quotes with images, but not so many in the original style (a thought in italics)
[^1]: They just don't stand out very well. For sans-serif fonts I feel "this stands out" better than this stands out. Possibly "this stands out" even better. For instance the "first instance of a cited Book Title" could look like this.
[^2]: Just use Markdown and stick to basic css and regular HTML tags (that Pandoc accepts), using child themes (like Anki) which have proper templating languages for more complex stuff. There might be some scope for e-Books later!
A refresher on quasi-academic writing.source/markdown/specimen.md
Decide a general tone, style (academic? head first) as a standard default. This can always be extended or updated for child themes.
Writing must be
Don't be boring
I don't need to think of all this upfront, as the main things I'm using this repo for is
simple articles
, theanki
tool, possibly afaq
or simpledocumentation
, someday abook
... so on. It just needs a simple guideline that's reasonably fun to read (and not a wall of text).Start super small, super simple and build from there.
Inspiration
See also:
20 — page breaks
18 — is this a bad idea?[^2]
Legible fonts
27
Basics
Italics
<i>
for styling?<i>
for visual styling?Heavily used in Terry Prachett's work and Game of Thrones. There's also times where it may not be appropriate.
Italics for works, titles, etc — or should this be
'quotation'
style? For instance, this guide has seemingly arbitrary rules for not using quotation marks on certain types of works.Bold
<b>
for visual styling?Using quotations and brackets
The Economist style guide ("This is speech and 'this inside' speech")
The Oxford style guide ('This is speech and "this inside" speech')
The New York Times
Paraphrasing with a citation (Harvard style)
Semicolons and dashes
Images
pre
insidefigure
(withfigcaption
)fig. 1
fig.1 — description
figure
plus quotefigure + figure
orfigure > img + img
(what happens when more than 1?)Citations
General Typography
General writing
Code
Other stuff
Composition
Accessibility
[^1]: They just don't stand out very well. For sans-serif fonts I feel "this stands out" better than this stands out. Possibly "this stands out" even better. For instance the "first instance of a cited Book Title" could look like this.
[^2]: Just use Markdown and stick to basic css and regular HTML tags (that Pandoc accepts), using child themes (like Anki) which have proper templating languages for more complex stuff. There might be some scope for e-Books later!