Style Guide 2015

In keeping with our descriptive and collective mission, entries can be added and edited by any Northwestern user with a NeD account. To maintain uniformity and clarity of information, we ask that every entry follow both the NeD Style Guide and the NeD Entry Layout. As an Editorial Board, we reserve the right to reformat or remove any such entries that do not comply to these standards. These style guides and entry layout forms were adapted from the foundational success of documents of the same name at Wiktionary.com, a dictionary with a similar online format, but a particular international focus. We are indebted to their example of a crowd sourced online dictionary. Questions and concerns should be directed to nudictionary@mmlc.northwestern.edu. Enjoy NeD!

The Basic Entry

Instructions and templates for Wikimarkup format for entries can be found on the Entry Layout for NeD.

Part of Speech

This is usually the first information directly after the headword. This header most often shows the part of speech, but is not restricted to “parts of speech” in the traditional sense. Many other descriptors like “Proper noun”, “Idiom”, “Abbreviation”, “Symbol”, “Prefix”, etc.

Pronunciation/Alternate Forms and Pronunciation

For words with only one form, the section title will simply be “Pronunciation”. Each entry should include a respelled version (following the WildWords Respelling Guide), placed in brackets, and should be followed by an audio file. For words with alternate or multiple forms (e.g. Weinberg vs. Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences), these will be included under the section title “Alternate Forms and Pronunciations”, with each form put in a numbered list. The respelling of each alternate form will be placed in brackets following the term, and there should be an audio sample following each form.

NeD uses a custom MediaWiki SoundCloud [widget] to play sound clips, which means the easiest method of uploading sound samples is to save the sound clip on the SoundCloud website and then display an audio file on the NeD page. WikiMarkup code for audio files can be found on the NeD Entry Layout page.

Usage

Each entry should include a description of the speech community that uses it and in what contexts it is used. For example, this may include whether it is used by the greater Northwestern community or a specific organization, if it is used in formal or informal contexts, or if it is used in spoken word or written text. If the entry is used by the greater Northwestern community, the sentence “This term is used by the Northwestern community at large” would suffice.

Definitions

The descriptions are the most fundamental piece of an encyclopedic dictionary. They should be concise but thorough, consisting of around four sentences. The goal is to provide readers with the necessary cultural information and context to be able to understand and use the word, without excess information or trivia.

An entry with a single description should not have a numeral. If the entry has multiple descriptions, then they should be added one after another in a numeric list. When the entry has multiple descriptions, they should be ordered from the most common usage to the least.

The description may consist of sentence fragments and complete sentences, with a preference for complete sentences.