The WildWords Project:Style Guide

Hello! And welcome to the Northwestern eDictionary, or NeD. This dictionary is a collaborative effort by students, faculty and staff at Northwestern University to catalogue and define the unique slang, jargon, colloquialisms and phrases used in this speech community as a whole and within its many and varied subcommunities. As language is a continually evolving human tool, NeD is in no way trying to prescribe or dictate how Northwestern individuals should speak. Rather, our goal is to describe the language currently in use as we see it. Due to the size and scope of the Northwestern Speech Community, NeD also does not presume to include every word or connotation of a word that is used here. There are far more words on the Northwestern campus than one Editorial Board could hope to fit into any dictionary. We have certainly tried to include the most information that we can, but if you feel that a particular sub-community has been particularly ignored, please let us know! We also encourage active participation on the discussion pages for each entry.

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 Entry Core

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

The part of speech or other descriptor

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.

Pronunication

Each entry should include a pronunciation guide following the NeD Respelling system. Every entry should have a pronunciation section, and perhaps a (optional) sound sample to accompany it. NeD uses a custom MediaWiki SoundCloud [widget] to play sound clips, which means the easiest method of uplouding 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.

Definitions

The definitions are the most fundamental piece of dictionary information. They are added in one big block under the heading Definitions, line after line, each beginning with a number sign (#) in the wiki markup code. Each definition should be concise and may be treated as a sentence: beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop.

Definitions should be as concise and objective as possible. Only in rare cases should a definition consist of more than two or three sentences or sentence fragments.

Types of definitions

Most definitions on NeD are either full definitions or glosses. Full definitions, which are preferred for English terms, explain the meaning a particular sense in detail. Glosses, which are preferred for non-English terms, simply point the user to one or more English translations of the term.

A full definition should start with a capital letter, and should end with a period.

Example of a definition:

• cat:

1. A domesticated species (Felis silvestris) of feline animal, commonly kept as a house pet.A simple gloss, though, should not be capitalized and should not end with a period.

For defining non-English words, glosses are strongly preferred. In general, a full definition should be provided only where a foreign-language term has no satisfactory English equivalent.

For English words, full definitions are strongly preferred. Even in the rare case of true synonymy, a gloss for an English term should be formatted as a definition.

Example of a gloss:

• C’est la vie: (French) that’s life

A definition should provide sufficient information for the user to both understand and use the word correctly. However, if the usage of an entry is complicated or extensive, another section for usage can be added.

In addition to the above types of definitions, some terms, such as function words, cannot be adequately defined in either of the above ways. The definitions used in this case are termed "non-gloss definitions".

Example of a non-gloss definition:

• because : Used to terminate inquiry concerning origin or purpose, typically initiated by why

Words in definitions

The use of technical and obscure words in definitions should be kept to an absolute minimum. When it is necessary or useful to use less common words, these should always have a succinct explanation on the page. It can also be helpful to link to a corresponding NeD or Wiktionary page.

Patterns

The key information should be placed as close to the beginning of the definition as grammar and elegance permit. Formatting the entry in this way will assist casual users in quickly locating the information they need.

Verbs: Definitions of verbs should begin with "to".

• To walk briskly.

Nouns: Definitions of nouns should begin with a definite or indefinite article. Usually an uncountable sense will take a definite article (the), while a countable sense will usually take an indefinite article (a/an.

• A domesticated species of canine animal, commonly kept as a house pet.
• the invisible gaseous substance surrounding the earth, a mixture mainly of oxygen and nitrogen.

Adjectives: The more concise construction, the better:

• Having a yellow color.

Definition sequence

Most users will glance only at the first few definitions in a long entry, rather than searching through all definitions to find the best match. For this reason, it is important that the most common senses of a term be placed first, even when this may be contrary to the logical or historical sequence.

Abbreviations

The “definitions” of entries that are abbreviations should be the expanded forms of the abbreviations. Where there is more than one expansion of the abbreviation, ideally these should be listed alphabetically to prevent the expanded forms being duplicated. The case used in the expanded form should be the usual one — do not capitalise words in the expanded form of an abbreviation that is made up of capital letters unless that is how the expanded form is usually written. Where the expanded forms are entries that appear (or should appear) in Wiktionary, wikify them. Expanded forms that are encyclopedic entries should also be wikified and linked to the appropriate Wikipedia entry. When the expanded form does not merit an entry of its own, either in Wiktionary or Wikipedia material, wikify its component words and give a gloss(italicised, in parentheses) after the expansion explaining what the term means.

Example sentences

Generally, every definition should be accompanied by a quotation illustrating the definition. If no quotation can be found, it is strongly encouraged to create an example sentence. Example sentences should:

• be grammatically complete sentences, beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.
• be placed immediately after the applicable numbered definition, and before any quotations associated with that specific definition.
• be italicized, with the defined term boldfaced.
• be as brief as possible while still clarifying the sense of the term. (In rare cases, examples consisting of two brief sentences may work best.)
• be indented using the “#:” command placed at the start of the line.
• not contain wikilinks (the words should be easy enough to understand without additional lookup)

Optional Headings

Etymologies

An etymology of each NeD word is encouraged if any information on the history and coinage of the word is available.

Context labels

Entries should include some way to tell us which part of the NU community makes use of this word. Context labels on NeD include students, faculty, staff, region of campus (e.g. North, South, Residential Colleges or Communities), student groups (e.g. Sororities, Fraternities, Clubs). Context labels can also include appropriate usage arenas, such as informal or formal.

Related Terms

Entries that include related NeD terms should list the wikilink to the NeD page for that page. This heading is meant for words that are either already entered in NeD or could be entered in the future.

External Links

Any other websites that are connected to the word should be linked under the heading External Links, below the related terms.

References

References are not necessary, but encouraged (when applicable) to help make a term more official. If a term can be found in Northwestern websites, magazines, or other sources, it is helpful to include them. References should be added in a separate header.

General considerations

In general, NeD favors a minimalistic approach. Entries should not be more complex than necessary. Content should not be added unless it adds value for some identifiable group of users. Avoiding unnecessary clutter and complication aids in the portability of our data, and helps to ensure that our entries will be usable to as wide a community of users as possible. For the same reasons, it is expected that entries will maintain as high a level of consistency as is possible to do while still respecting the complexity of the lexicon.

Varieties of English

English spelling and usage varies widely from one dialect to another. NeD does not privilege one variety over another. However, it is expected that an entry should be internally consistent and that entries should not be edited for the sole purpose of changing from one English dialect to another.

Punctuation

Quotation marks

NeD favors the use of double quotation marks (" " or “ ”) rather than single ones (' ' or ‘ ’). Single quotes are normally used only when one quotation is enclosed within another. NeD usage places any terminal punctuation outside of the quotation marks, unless it is actually part of the quote.

Parentheses

Parentheses should be used in definitions only for the purpose of identifying restrictions of the headword in the current sense, such as transitive verbs that require an object.As in:

To lead (a group)

Jones here will head the team.

Commas

Authorities and preferences differ over the appropriateness of the Serial comma. Include the final comma before the last element in a list so as to be most clear. Eg. ... red, white, and blue.

Interwiki Links

Related words with their own NeD pages used in the defintion of an entry should be wikilinked through bracket notation. An example can be found on the Entry Layout page.

Right hand side

Most content elements should be in the main (center) section of the page. Accepted items that may appear on the right-hand side:

• Images
• Video Examples
• Usage Polls

When possible the width of right-hand side elements should be uniform so as to provide a "virtual" right-hand side column. Example wikimarkup can be found on the Entry Layout page.