Sinclair Wiki:Manual of Style

This Manual of Style (abbreviated MoS) is the style guide for the Sinclair FAQ Wiki.

Generally, Wikipedia's Manual of Style is a good guide, which should be followed.

We deviate from Wikipedia in that spellings should be in British English, except where using an American English product name, keyword, etc. or when quoting text directly.

Also, we do not always place a space between quantities and the symbol for the units in which they are expressed, i.e. we would use "10s" instead of "10 s".

When using imperial units, vulgar fractions are preferred, e.g. "3½″ and 5¼″ floppy disks".

When expressing units in inches, the double prime (″) is preferred, rather than a double quote (").

Use "µ" for "micro" as you might use "m" for "milli", rather than "u", unless referring to a keyword, filename etc. where a "u" is required. For example, "Currah µSpeech" and "Currah MicroSpeech" are acceptable (although the former is preferred, as this was preferred by Currah themselves). For a filename, "uspeech.rom" is acceptable.

For screen resolutions, character block and sprite sizes, etc. use a multiply sign ("×") instead of the letter "x".

Use ± and not "+/-". Use the "en dash" ("–") instead of the hyphen-minus ("-") for ranges of figures, e.g. "the screen resides at 0x4000–0x5aff" and "this can take 4–5 seconds". Use the "em dash" ("—") instead of "--" for splitting sentences — such as in this very sentence. Use proper minus signs ("−") instead of the hypen-minus ("-") for subtraction, e.g. "the 'SUB B' instruction performs the operation 'A := A−B' and updates the flags register".

For signals that are active low, use the {{overline}} template, e.g. "{{overline|M1}}" to produce "M1", rather than "!M1", "/M1" or any other notation.

For activities involving a flow of user operations, use "→", e.g. "choose File → Save As".

Use Interwiki links, e.g. Wikipedia:ZX Spectrum (English Wikipedia) or Wikipedia:es:Sinclair ZX Spectrum (Spanish Wikipedia) rather than full URLs where possible, although use appropriate wording for the links, e.g. the Spanish Wikipedia article on the ZX Spectrum so that the Interwiki syntax is not seen by the reader.