TechWiki talk:Manual of Style

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Referring to specific styles

In various places in this article, there are references to "Emphasis style," "UI Element style," "Procedure Heading style," "List Continue styles," "User Input style," and "one of the list styles." These seem to allude to specific styles in a word processing or authoring system, which are clearly not available to writers on LDSTech. We need to replace these with more generic descriptions. Or if we want to continue to refer to those styles by name (to benefit Church employees who may be using this Manual of Style), we should link those terms to a definition that explains the wikitext equivalent. -- Aebrown 15:32, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Good catch. I went through and edited the guidelines to remove these references. Overall, I must admit I think this style guide has become a bit more lengthy and complicated than I initially intended. I don't want to intimidate users. Still, it's the ICS user education group's style, more or less. --Tom Johnson 21:50, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Style Guide for Publications of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Where does one access a (digital or print) copy of Style Guide for Publications of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? The rest of the style guides listed are documents that I would expect to find at the local bookstore, but I'm not finding a digital version or purchase opportunities for the church-specific one anywhere.--Gamersrc (talk) 11:38, 27 June 2013 (MDT)

I'm pretty sure that the Style Guide you refer to is only available internally for Church employees. And since Tom Johnson no longer works for the Church, I doubt that anyone will see this conversation who knows the specific answer.

Why do you want this, by the way? If you're a Church employee, you would have access, but otherwise, I don't understand why you would want to know about those specific guidelines. -- Aebrown (talk) 12:50, 27 June 2013 (MDT)

LDS Tech stuff is supposed to comply with that style guide, so how do we make contributions compliant without having access to it? Seems kinda odd that such a standard would be made without providing means by which to comply (although I'm sure that's just an oversight somewhere in the command chain). I've noticed in reading the Ensign and church-published lesson manuals that there's a standard for when "Church" is capitalized and such, but hadn't managed to pick up exactly what the rule is so went looking for a style guide that would cover that type of thing. --Gamersrc (talk) 13:44, 27 June 2013 (MDT)

I'm not sure what you mean by "LDSTech stuff"; the MoS refers to "LDSTech articles," which applies to LDSTech Blog articles. There was a time when Tom Johnson was hoping that a lot of community members would be contributing blog articles, but that didn't really materialize. There also was a time when significant product technical documentation was on the wiki, but that has almost all been moved to other sites where the community has no access; the sections that remain are managed by Church employees, and I don't see anyone else contributing there anyway.

Although this whole Manual of Style is interesting, I don't see what content is being written now by community members that would be bound by these formal guidelines. From what I can see, formal content is written by Church employees, who have access to the Style Guide. So I still don't understand what you are planning to write that would be bound by the Church's Style Guide. Could you give me a specific example?

As for your specific question about when to capitalize "Church" the rule is simply that when you are referring to the actual entity The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you capitalize "Church"; when you are referring to meetings or a local building in a more generic fashion, you don't capitalize it. Some examples:

• "church-published lesson manuals": Incorrect. Since your intent above (this is a quote from you) was to refer to the actual entity, this should be "Church-published lesson manuals." Without the capitalization, the phrase could just as easily be referring to manuals published by the Lutheran Church.
• "I attend meetings at the church": Correct. This is a reference to the building.
• "she's a Church employee": Correct. The person is employed by the legal entity, so it must be capitalized.

-- Aebrown (talk) 05:38, 28 June 2013 (MDT)

Thanks for the additional information. As to the question on what I would be writing that would be _required_ to follow the Church's Style Guide, that's now been clarified to be nothing. I'm still curious on an academic level for attempting to make other writings that aren't required to be in compliance as close as possible though. The whole point of style guides is to ensure textual consistency so as to maximize clarity to the reader; following a particular style guide doesn't imply endorsement by the publisher of that guide in any way.--Gamersrc (talk) 08:27, 28 June 2013 (MDT)