Ultima Codex:Style guide

The following is a list of styles that have become tradition here at the Codex, or have been arrived at by consensus. Unfortunately, this page tends to ask more questions than it answers. Feel free to add anything new to the discussions to which this page links. Do not discuss anything in this article. This article is only for established styles or due acknowledgement of controversies of style.

How to use this article
With patience, is the easy answer. Many issues have been addressed, but not settled. You might be aware of some issues that have not even been addressed. In both these cases, feel free to engage in the forum or on this article's talk page.

What do I do if it doesn't answer my question?
If all editors played it safe, and were as indecisive as Codex policies are, there would be no Codex. One rule of thumb is to use whatever the games have in their texts and documentation. If not, use the style you learned in English class. Another slower but more methodical approach is to seek consensus before doing anything. When in doubt, take some initiative, tempered by your command of the English language.

Consistency of style
If an article uses two different styles, then the decision is a little easier. The Codex might be a hodge-podge of different styles, but articles shouldn't be. This means that if the text is written from a past tense POV, then keep it in the past. If a word is repeated, then it should be spelled the same in each instance, even if both spellings are correct.

The Avatar
In most Ultimas other than Ultima VIII and Ultima IX the Avatar could be (but was not always limited to) male or female. Consensus from Talk:The_Stranger is that, in those cases, anything that could construe the Avatar as being incorrectly limited to one gender is to be avoided. Usually this comes down to avoiding pronouns like he or him. The solution is to chose a wording that avoids pronouns all together, even if this is at the expense of a sentence's smoothness. There is precedent for this in the documentation that accompanies the games, where no instance of pronouns are used in connection with the Avatar.

One solution that consensus rejects is the attempt to include all possible genders. This takes the form of he/she, him/her , and so on. Currently, many articles are written with this style, but they are being rolled back. Feel free to make corrections accordingly.

Anyone else
There are many other situations where gender is ambiguous since many texts discuss individuals who are generic. These would include those mentioned in articles about spells, equipment, etc. Origin quite liberally uses he as gender-neutral in these circumstances, however, there has been little discussion on this issue, and no consensus reached.

Spelling (Ultima is always right)
Tradition, but not consensus, hold that Ultima is always right. For instance, Blue Tassles, is a misspelling according to the dictionary, but not according to Ultima. The correct Ultima spelling is "tassles", therefore the correct Codex spelling is "tassles".

In Britannia, spelling is not usually British. Origin System Inc. has always been an American company, and as such, usually spells things in the American fashion. There are exceptions, however, so again Ultima is always right. Therefore, there is "honor" and "valor" in Britannia but in Ultima II there is Pirates Harbour. Notice, too, that "Pirates Harbour" is missing an apostrophe&mdash;it should.

Pronunciation guides
Currently, the tradition is to sounds-out words using familiar syllables. It is less accurate than IPA, but simpler and more intuitive and easily sufficient for Codex purposes. Take drax-in-oo-som : notice also the oo in bold. The boldfaced syllable is the accentuated syllable. Usually, these should only be used for words native to Ultima, when their pronunciation is known&mdash;no guessing or presuming.

Mixing plural and possessive
You should not need the Codex to tell you this, because this should have been learned in grammar school. But unfortunately, even many professional writers of English are unable to withstand the temptation to put an apostrophe behind the s when pluralizing anything that isn't a simple, alphabetic word. Consequently, 1980's, POV's , and CPU's abound. They should not here or anywhere else. The decade that saw all the Apple ][ Ultimas released was the "1980s". The sum of all editors here make for many "POVs". If your computer is multi-core, it has many "CPUs".