Help:Formatting

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This page gives guidelines for formatting commentary pages.

General guidance[edit]

  • Encyclopedic commentary. This site represents a unique genre. It is probably most closely related to an encyclopedic commentary book, but of course it is web-based and composed by multiple authors as a constant work-in-progress. Because of these features, the formatting and writing style of this wiki project are unique, and should not be expected to follow guidelines for normal book or article writing.
  • Easy referencing. Because of the multiple-author, encyclopedic and work-in-progress nature of this site, a primary goal of the site is to make for easy reference. This means the site will have much more structure than normal book or article writing—perhaps better conceived as an elaborate outline of different views and insights rather than a book.
  • Greek Fonts. When discussing lexical difficulties for the NT or LXX, a Polytonic Greek Unicode font may be used, but the Greek word should also be transliterated and defined the first time it is used for the benefit of non-specialists. For information about using Polytonic Greek fonts and other Unicode solutions, see here[1].

Structure of commentary pages[edit]

Subheadings[edit]

  • Indicating verses. Since pages on this site refer to several verses, virtually all comments should have a subheading indicating which verse or verses they refer to, for easy reference.
  • Wiki markup. Level 3 subheadings are created using 3 equals signs on either side of the heading (for example, "===Verses 2-4===").

Bullets and signposting[edit]

  • Single paragraph bullets. Single paragraph comments are best written using a bullet prefix (indicated using a "*" prefix on the edit page).
  • Bold signpost. A bolded signpost should be used with bullets to indicate (in no more than a handful of words) the content of the paragraph. The italicized signpost generally should not include quotation marks even when quoting a phrase from the particular verse. When commentary consists of multiple paragraphs, a level 3 subheading should be used without any bullets (usually following the format "===Verses XX-YY: Description of commentary===").
  • Capitalization. The first letter of headings, subheadings, and signposts should be capitalized, while subsequent words should not generally be capitalized.

Other issues[edit]

  • Scripture outlines. Scripture outlines should be put either on a user subpage or on the main commentary page of the first verse being outlined. If an entire book or chapter is being outlined, the outline should be placed on the page for that book or chapter (e.g. To the Hebrews). Punctuation should not be used for following outline elements, unless complete sentences are used (parallel structure should be the goal, so that if one level of the outline has a complete sentence, other elements of that level should have complete sentences also).
  • References. References to books or other off-line material should normally be placed in the Related Links section with at least the title, author, relevant page numbers, and the ISBN of the work given (notice that typing in the ISBN will automatically create a link).
  • Abbreviations. The word "verse" should normally be written out in normal text, although the abbreviations "v." (singular) and "vv." (plural) can be used in parenthetical comments.
  • Spacing. Two spaces should generally be used between sentences and signposts. One space is usually sufficient after a colon. Two line extra breaks should be used at the end of level 2 subheadings, otherwise, one extra line break is generally sufficient.


Examples[edit]

  • Structure. This page provides an example of how a commentary page should generally be structured.
  • Exemplary commentary page. Gen 1:1 gives an example of how formatting and structure guidelines should be used in practice.


Related links[edit]