Pedants of WordPress Unite! (aka a handbook update)

Do you love to worry about oxford commas? Do you care about whether you write in the first, second, or third person? Do formatting considerations keep you up at night? Then this is your opportunity to get your voice heard!

It would be great to achieve consistency across the handbooks, so I’d like to have a discussion about content style and formatting. As a result, we will have a style guide. The style guide is something that I hope that writers will be aware of, but it will be particularly important for editors and proofreaders, so if you do want to work on editing any of the manuals, or want to proofread, please do come along. Also, anyone else who is interested is more than welcome.

Let’s do this in a Google Hangout.

Tuesday 11th December @ 2100 UTC (that’s 9pm London) – here’s the time everywhere else.

You can find me on G+

Agenda

1. Review of the schema:
I’d just like to make sure everyone is happy with it and it is fit for purpose.

2. Review of current WordPress Codex writing tips:
Are they suitable for the handbooks and shall we generate a style guide from them?

3. Tone and voice

4. Formatting

heading usage, screenshots, use of bold, call-out boxes

5. Assessment of any additional tools needed
Syntax highlighter etc

6. Brief discussion of workflow
I’m going to write a post up about this – the idea will be to get started with actual content creation in the New Year. But I’d love to discuss some ideas with you guys. If necessary we can schedule another chat about it.

At some point I’d also like to have some accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) guidelines drawn up. For example, the best way to make use of alt tags, and making sure we create a structure that’s accessible.

If there’s anything else that needs discussed, please add it to the comments.

[update: yes – I did originally title the post “pendants of WordPress unite”. This is why we need people like you!]

#handbooks