In line with our desire for both openness and transparency, we are including our own style manual here, so you can also hold us to account if we fail to meet it.
DRAFT OET Style
We are initially using a style based on British English (BrE) style for the OET. Later we hope (as far as is possible) to automatically generate an American English (AmE) version of our OET style.
Headings
Headings generally only have initial capitals on the first word. They should be concise. They do not have punctuation even if they are a full clause. They do not have footnote, cross-reference, glossary or any other kind of caller. They are normally bold and a sans-serif font that coordinates nicely with the (more usually serifed) font of the body text.
Title
The title of the entire work, e.g. Open English Translation of the Bible, is bold, centred, and can have heading capitalisation.
Book headings
Each Bible book starts on a new page (not necessarily RHS). The heading format is bold, centred, sentence capitalisation but without punctuation. The longest version of the name should be written at the beginning of that book, e.g. ‘Good news about Yeshua the Messiah as told by Matteo’. If the full name is more than two words or so, then there should also be a short name e.g. ‘Matteo’, suitable for the contents list and for at the top of each page of that book.
Section headings
Section headings are not inspired Scripture, which we attempt to show by placing them in a box separate from the text proper (plus we didn’t want to interrupt the normal flow of the text). They should only have the first word having initial capital letter, otherwise normal sentence capitalisation.
Body text
Be aware when editing or translating, of the register of the text, for example how formal it is, what kind of genre. match the English you use to that register as far as possible.
The text immediately following a heading should not assume that the reader has read the heading. So, for example, you should not use a pronoun in the first sentence of a section to refer to someone mentioned in the section heading. You should refer to them fully.
It is conventional but not necessary to begin a new paragraph when there is a change of speaker.
Punctuation
Punctuation is set in the style of the phrase or title it belongs to.
Avoid double punctuation. When you have an abbreviation with punctuation straight after it, it is usually better to drop the full stop at the end of the abbreviation. You definitely should drop it if the sentence punctuation is a full stop. Likewise do not use a comma or a full stop after an ellipsis. Question marks at the end of a quote should not be followed by a comma even if the enveloping sentence has not ended e.g. when the quote formula is at the end of the sentence. When there could be two punctuation marks in the same place, use the stronger punctuation. ! and ? are stronger than , and . A colon is stronger than a semi-colon. (AmE is comfortable with double and even triple punctuation.)
When you have a sentence inside a sentence, do not put a full stop on the embedded sentence. This can occur with quotes and with sentences in brackets.
Full stop
Do not put a full stop at the end of a sentence if that puts it immediately after a dot of an abbreviation or similar.
A full stop should be followed by a capital letter. Try hard to avoid having a digit or symbol at the beginning of a sentence. You can use a semicolon instead of a full stop in this situation.
Ellipsis marks (…) would not be commonly found in Scripture. They can be used to mark a gap in quoted material, or an incomplete sentence where the ending is left to the readers’ imagination e.g. ‘but so that all righteousness might be fulfilled …’.
An ellipsis at the end of a sentence does not have a fourth dot after it, but does if the ellipsis is followed by a quotation mark. A capital letter after an ellipsis implies that a whole sentence has been omitted.
Comma
Normally commas will be the only punctuation inside a sentence. In general add a comma when it will remove ambiguity, or where you would expect a reader to pause for a breath. (Note that automatic document readers are often helped by having more, rather than less, commas.)
Non-restrictive relative clauses are comma’ed off e.g. ‘The teams, who had uniforms, were ready to compete’. Restrictive relative clauses are not comma’ed e.g. ‘The teams who had uniforms were more confident’. Likewise for a phrase or word.
Two main clauses should not be connected to each other with just a comma (called a comma splice). Use a conjunction, em dash, semicolon, or colon.
When a comma comes immediately after an abbreviation ending in a dot, remove the abbreviation's dot.
Semicolon
Use a semicolon when you have already used commas and want to show a stronger division e.g. fruit with pips, stones or kernels; plants with red leaves; grain heads and pulses.
You can use a semicolon instead of a full stop when the next sentence begins with a symbol or a letter that cannot be capitalised. Use an em dash without spaces both to restate or expand a statement, and to separate off a parenthetical statement.
Colon
A colon points forward, e.g. from a premise to a conclusion, to introduce a list. What comes after need not be able to stand as a separate sentence. Use a colon to separate two clauses when one explains the other.
In BrE the first word after a colon is not capitalised unless the colon is introducing an extended quotation. AmE may capitalise the word if the colon introduces a grammatically complete sentence.
Question mark
In indirect speech, you do not necesssarily need to put a question mark when a question is implied. Do not use a question mark when the intent of the utterance is not to ask a question e.g. were you born in a tent, unless it is needed it to convey the intonation of a polite request e.g. do you mind closing the door? Never use multiple question marks in Scripture. An appropriate emoji would be less radical!
Exclamation mark
You can use an exclamation mark following emphatic statements, commands and interjections expressing emotion. It should be used very sparingly, and never more than one at a time.
Hyphen
Hyphens are used less often now for compound words. Some compounds can be either two words, one word or hyphenated. BrE tends to using two words and AmE to using one word. We should be consistent throughout the books in which form we use for each compound.
See the appendix for the various words about which decisions have been made for the OET.
Compound words, when used adjectivally, should be hyphenated e.g. three quarters of the people voted. There was a two-thirds majority.
You can hyphenate a prefix or suffix to avoid confusion.
Hyphenate spelled out numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine.
When capitalising hyphenated words in a heading, traditionally you did not capitalise the word after the hyphen unless it is always capitalised. Now it is more usual to capitalise that word as well so we will do that.
[**We don’t need the following if the software is able to automatically do the hyphenating for us without us putting in potential hyphen points.] Hyphenating words at the end of a line can be very helpful for laying out text, especially when you are having two columns. With hyphenated words, the reader needs more skill to put the word back together in their mind. But reading lines of very different lengths takes reading skill too. Aim to hyphenate at a syllable break and ideally at a morpheme break, e.g. mis-spent not miss-pent. Each part of the word should have at least three letters. Neither part of the word should have a meaning different from the meaning of the word as a whole e.g. molest-ation not mole-station. ☺ Aim to hyphenate so that the pronunciation/stress rules will still produce the correct pronunciation.
A word that usually has a hyphen might be broken at the end of a line. Traditionally, if it breaks at the hyphen, then both the parts of the word have a hyphen (one at the end of the first line and another at the beginning of the next line). These days it is as common to only have the hyphen at the end of the first part, unless it is important for the reader to know that the word is always hyphenated.
Dash
Sometimes a dash can be used as a less formal option where a colon would otherwise be. There should not be any punctuation immediately before a dash. Do not capitalise a word after a dash even if it begins a sentence, unless it is a word that is always capitalised like a name.
The en dash is the width of an average letter. It is used without spaces to show a range, to separate names of different people, e.g. Myers–Briggs, instead of a forward slash to show alternatives, with a similar effect to to or and. Do not use it to separate off an aside or afterthought: use an em dash instead.
The em dash is twice the length of the en dash. We are using it to both to restate or expand a statement, and to separate off a parenthetical statement. (AmE and Oxford use an em dash without spaces as a parenthetical dash. Non-Oxford BrE publications use an en dash with a space either side.)
An em dash can be used with a space either side to indicate a word deliberately left unstated.
Forward slash
In text the forward slash generally means or, not and. A forward slash or a vertical rule can be used in laying out poetry if necessary to show the break in a line of poetry that has not been laid out in poetical style. Apart from this poetical use, it is better not to use forward slash as it makes it awkward to read that text aloud.
Brackets
The punctuation at the end of a sentence comes inside the brackets if the entire sentence is inside the brackets. An opening bracket should not have a comma immediately before it.
Round brackets ( ) are also called parentheses. They are used for digressions and explanations. Avoid nested brackets if at all possible. Consider using commas or dashes instead of one set of brackets.
Square brackets [ ] (simply called brackets in UsE), braces (also called curly brackets), aand angle brackets< > are not usually used in the OET text. [**Note here any context where these would be used.]
Apostrophe
For plurals use ’s after singular nouns and indefinite pronouns. Use the apostrophe without the s after plurals ending in s. Possessive pronouns don’t have an apostrophe. Don’t use a possessive apostrophe with its (meaning 'belonging to it'). It’s with an apostrophe means It is.
Do not use an apostrophe when the s at the end of the word is marking plural rather than possessive. The only exceptions are for when it is needed for clarity e.g. dot your i's. Do not use an apostrophe at the beginning of words that began life as contractions but are now accepted words e.g. flu.
The apostrophe in front of a year expressed as two numbers should be a closing-quotation style e.g. summer of ’89.
Quotation marks
When quotation marks are enclosing clauses or sentences, up to a paragraph, use double quotation marks. When quotation marks are needed within a clause, to enclose a phrase or word, use single quotation marks.
For a quotation within a quotation, use single quotation marks. Avoid if at all possible nesting quotation marks further than two layers e.g. by using indirect speech instead.
When direct speech in quotation marks has more than one paragraph, the convention is to start each paragraph with a quotation mark (called a continuer) but to only put an end quotation mark at the completion of the entire utterance.
Extended quotations, especially for more formal utterances, do not have quotation marks. Instead the text is indented one em at both left and right margins to mark the extent of the quotation. For direct speech use a colon at the end of the introducing paragraph rather than a full stop or comma.
If you wish, words used in an ironic sense can be in quotes. It is easy to overuse this convention: only use this if the irony will otherwise be lost. Likewise a newly coined word can be enclosed in single quotation marks the first time it is used in any one Bible book.
When referring to a document title use italics (\it) e.g. Annals of Judea. When referring to the title of a song or poem, of a chapter or part of a document, use quotation marks e.g. ‘Dove in the dawn’. Besides an initial capital on the first word, use ordinary sentence capitalisation in document titles.
Quotation marks should not come outside punctuation unless the scope of the punctuation is entirely inside the quotation. So, for example, an ending-quotation mark should come before a full stop unless the whole sentence is inside the quotation. (In AmE punctuation is placed inside the ending-quotation mark regardless.)