---
title: "Personal style guide for ninoan.com"
status: page
date: 2025-02-02T10:36:02+0000
modified: 2026-07-30T14:06:55+0000
---

- Headings in blog posts start at `h2`, since the post title is `h1`. So, in
  Markdown, the first level of headings in a blog post is marked with `##`.
- Use British English spelling (e.g., "organisation", "realise", etc.).
    - Exception: I write "math" instead of "maths", because I still _speak_ with
      an ~American accent.
    - Exception: for the same reason, I write "gotten", not "got", as the past
      participle of "get". E.g., "how far you've gotten".
    - Don't capitalise "God", "He", "Him", "His". It's the twenty-first century,
      god can deal with his name just being a noun.
- Punctuation only goes inside quotation marks if it belongs there semantically.
    - E.g.: I don't know if this sign says "hello". Does this sign say "hello"?
      Maybe the sign says "Hello.".
- Parenthetical clauses can be delimited by parentheses (obviously), or
  en-dashes with a space on either side -- like this. (In Markdown, en-dashes
  can be spelled as two hyphens.)
- Use double-quotes for the first level of quotation, then alternate between
  single and double. E.g., "'Curiouser and curiouser,' said Alice."
- Use curly quotes & apostrophes. In Markdown, you can use straight quotes &
  apostrophes, since Astro will convert them. Exception: Words that start with
  an apostrophe need to have the apostrophe spelled out as a right single quote,
  or they will be turned into an opening single quote. E.g.: "Oi mate, when I
  tell you to ’op on, you ’op on!"
- Don't be overly pretentious. Say "use", not "utilise". (You can use "utilise"
  to mean "make full use of", if you really have to.)
- Say "all right", not "alright". Because I saw someone on the internet say "all
  right" is better, so that's what we're doing.
- Don't add a stupid 's' to words that don't need it. No "whilst", no "towards",
  etc.
- Possessives end with "'s" if the subject is in the singular, even if the
  subject's name ends with an "s". E.g., "Jess's bag", not "Jess' bag".
- When referring to the plural of an identifier in a programming language, an
  "s" goes outside of the backticks, and the spelling of the identifier is
  preserved. So, "`Array`s", "`Property`s". This looks weird, but writing
  "`Properties`" or "Properties" both seems bad.