Writing Guide

Note: You can always break the rules. Just run it by someone before final drafting.

Pronouns, Gender and Sex

• Man/Woman - No humans here. Use male, female, enby, or species name. You can use terms like lady for the vibes, but do so sparingly or try to find an alternative, not as a replacement term.
• Mate - For most species, use pairbonding for marriage and mate for husband/wife.
  • Exception: Montrose still use "marriage" and "husband/wife".
• While normally you simply use pronouns as you see fit, various traditions and species in the setting have specific focuses.
  • Ringel: No gender, technically. Ringel in their own speech do not use gendered language, but rather might directly refer to sexual characteristics, and it is not seen as crude. This can still be transcribed as male/female/enby where appropriate. Use pronouns for ringel based on vibes. Ringel who change sex might not even change pronouns, but they might.
    • Use mother/father in a technical sense--the one who gave birth is a mother, the one who sired is a father, even if they have changed sexual characteristics since then.
  • Ssarith and Turek: No gender. Turek have both male and female characteristics. Ssarith are fully agender. Neither differentiate between roles.
    • Within ssarith/turek POV, choose one pronoun for ssarith/turek and stick with it to indicate uniformity in gender. You can use he, she, or they.
      • If you have multiple of the species, it's sometimes better to avoid they due to plurality confusion.
      • Ssarith and turek do not need to refer to each other by the same pronoun; they are outsiders to one another.
    • Outside of ssarith/turek POV, go by the POV character's local conventions or vibes. Non-ssarith/turek might still refer to different members by different pronouns.
    • Since neither have an innate concept of gender or sexual roles, they may easily get confused by other characters' genders.
      • For instance, montrose local conventions are to perceive ssarith and turek as feminine, so would trend toward using "she" exclusively for both species.
  • Ulayavi: Gender is chosen at age of majority and tends to reflect sexual roles, but is not exclusive to them.
    • Children are either referred to genderlessly or by the gender they expect to pick.
    • Ulayavi will typically seek to change their sexual characteristics to fit their chosen gender, but don't have to.

=Terminology

• Hands - Use paws, claws, or whatever is appropriate to the species over hands. Or if writing an anup, don't mention them at all, pervert.
  • Exceptions - Words like handed, handling, handsome, handedly, etc. If it's a handy verb or adjective, probably doesn't need adjusting.
    • Exceptions to the exceptions - Punning is pawesome.
• Measurements - Metric system is preferred.
  • Exceptions - Beer can be measured in pints because metric doesn't have a convenient term for 470ml.

Transcription

• Accents - Nothing so heavy as to be indistinguishable from gibberish, unless it's a language not yet in the translators.

• Nose - Functional, but consider snouts, snoots, proboscis, or even antennae as appropriate.
• Puns - As many as you can! Make Gre7g suffer!

Typesetting

• All Caps - Use for signage if applicable; otherwise emphasize using italics.
• Bold - At your own risk. In other stories, bold is sometimes used in standalone centered text like reading out signage, but it's preferred not to use it in-line.
• Drop Caps - Don't use while drafting, this is final polish formatting.
• Italics - For emphasis, titles (books and ship names, not personal titles), thoughts (without quotations), alternative communiques (lip reading, chemical signals, flash [morse] code). In a line of italics, un-italicize to indicate emphasis.
  • ex: We need to infiltrate the White Flower II in order to acquire their delicious fruit pies, she thought.
• Small Caps - Used to denote the beginning of a chapter or passage depending on layout style, with the first x words put into small caps for visual weight. Don't use while drafting, this is a final polish formatting.
• Underline - Underlining is not preferred in general fiction for any reason--traditionally, underlining text in manuscripts told the typesetter to italicize the text. Since now we can just format directly in word processors, there is no need to do this anymore.