Stevivor style guide

Our ultimate how-to.

This style guide is a continued work-in-progress, though Stevivor shall endeavour to ensure all articles after and updates adhere to the rules outlined below.

Style guide last updated 28 June 2021.

General

• The blog is intended for a general audience. Aim to write in a clear, succinct style.
• We use Australian English.
• Use single spaces after sentences.
• Avoid usage of unnecessary quotation marks. If you wouldn’t use your fingers to do the classic air quote sign above your head when reciting the sentence out loud, you don’t need ’em.
• Avoid usage of exclamation marks, especially in news pieces. They very rarely emphasise a point more than a full stop.
• Do not provide references in text or as footnotes. References should be provided as hyperlinks.
• Do not use capitals, italics, bold or underline for emphasis.
• Bold is used for instructions and tutorials.
  • On your Xbox One, go to Settings and select Preferences…
• Ellipsis appearance as follows: three full stops, space, next word.
  • Take my husband… please!
• Em dash appearance as follows: space, two hyphens, space.
  • Now don’t get me wrong — though I am all the time — but cake tastes…
• We use the oxford comma when referring to lists of items.
• Quotes with quotes are represented by single quotations in the middle of double quotes.
  • “And then I said to them, ‘we shouldn’t be doing this’,” Steve asserted.
• If you are using an abbreviation or acronym several times through a piece, please put it in parentheses on first mention.
  • The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA)
• Organisations are single entities and should be referred to as such.
  • Microsoft said it will not increase the pricing of Xbox Live…
  • Stevivor is looking into allegations that…
• We go with “video game” and not “videogame”.

Dates, times, costs and numbers

• Acceptable date and time appearance as follows:
  • Wednesday, 20 August 2013
  • 20 August 2013
  • 20 August
  • 10 am AEST or 10.00 am AEST; 1 pm AEST or 1.00 pm AEST
  • 10.35 am AEST or 1.15 pm AEST
• We refer to dollar amounts as follows:
  • $199.99 AUD, $199.99 NZD, $199.99 USD
  • $199 AUD, $199.99 AUD, $199 NZD, $199.99 NZD, $199 USD, $199.99 USD
  • £199.99, €199.99
  • £199, £199.00, €199, €199.00
• Spell out numbers from one to nine. Numbers 10 and above should be written as numerals, except if they open a sentence.
• The 21st century, the 19th century. The 400th time.
• Use numbers for decades: the 1970s. Or the 70s.
• Percentages should be written as 87%, not 87 per cent or 87 percent.

Titles

• Game titles, TV show titles, book titles, etc are to be in italics. Game numbering drops any roman numerals for SEO, and colons are also stripped for that same reason.
  • Diablo 2 Resurrected was today announced by Activision…
  • I just finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird  by Harper Lee…
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer used to be a childhood favourite, but now…
  • Need for Speed Most Wanted is a racing game that…
  • Doom Eternal Ancient Gods Part 1 is the shooter’s latest expansion, now available…
• Level names, short stories within books and TV episodes are to be in quotations.
  • “Once More With Feeling” is my favourite Buffy episode…
  • I just read “Short story number 1” inside World War Z by Max Brooks
• Post titles are in sentence case, with proper nouns, etc capitalised where necessary. No italics. Number rules can be ignored for SEO spacing.
  • Batman Arkham Asylum introduces new Deathstroke Challenges DLC pack
  • Age of Empires 4 will have 8 civilizations for its 2021 launch
  • Star Trek Picard will bring back Q for its second season
• All positions are lower case when referred to alone.
  • The president, vice president, game director
• Titles take caps when they’re attached to a name.
  • Game Director Rod Fergusson
  • Rob Kostich, the President of Activision Blizzard