Re: A Style Guide for Ethiopic Layout

Hello Daniel,

Many thanks for all your work. In cases where it's not clear what the 
best solution is (and maybe also a few other cases), it may be good to 
put out two or more alternatives, and make sure it's clear that the 
answers may also include things like "it depends", such as "it depends 
on authors' preferences", "it depends on publisher's preferences", and 
so on.

That reduces the chance that people don't just accept things because 
they are better than nothing, or because they don't think they can be 
easily changed. Things like that have happened all over the world with 
software that wasn't ready for some typographic tradition, but people 
just thought they couldn't change things easily. (I won't mention any 
product names here; I'm sure you all know what I mean.)

Regards,   Martin.

On 02/04/2020 11:17, Daniel Yacob wrote:
> Greetings All,
> 
> Firstly, I hope everyone is safe and well during this challenging time and
> will pull through it intact and with a renewed appreciation of the gift
> that is life.
> 
> An update is long overdue here, and I've nearly sent one a dozen times
> over, my apologies for not succeeding. In the previous update I reported
> that a survey was to be translated and then circulated for expert input.
> What we learned from two translators that we worked with was that the text
> was too difficult to translate clearly, and wouldn't make sense if
> translated.  Any translation would still be confusing to the reader.
> 
> Instead of surveying to answer a shopping list of questions, they suggested
> another approach that would lead to a result that would be more easily
> understood and would garner better feedback.  The recommendation was to
> write a style guide and then have experts react to it and make suggestions
> and corrections.  The view was that it is better to state rules, rather
> than ask what rules should be, as was the approach in the survey form.
> 
> To this end a style guide was initiated that covered the same topics as the
> survey.  By "style guide" I refer to a writer's style guide such as the
> MLA, APA, or Chicago Manual of Style to name a few.  However, with the
> reduced scope that the style guide would only cover formatting and layout
> topics that software would be expected to automate.  The style guide would
> *not* cover how to write good prose and give guidance on grammar.
> 
> The survey effort then took the direction of producing a basic style guide
> to bring to the Ethiopian Writers Association to present to their members
> for feedback.  The development of the style guide is ongoing and can be
> reviewed here: https://w3c.github.io/elreq/style-guide/  It is largely
> modeled after the Chicago Manual of Style, simply for its good inventory of
> formatting topics.  The recommendations in the draft style guide offer what
> would be a likely candidate for a best practice from amongst known
> variations in practices.  Sometimes a section simply presents a "best
> guess" when there is no clear basis to recommend one approach over
> another.  It is expected that expert stakeholders would correct any guess
> that is in error.
> 
> I'll end here. Again my apologies for the long break in communications.
> 
> -Daniel
>

Received on Thursday, 2 April 2020 07:50:16 UTC