WikiLectures:Typography

There are certain typographical rules that should be used at WikiLectures. Where it is possible, we chose similar style to the Journal of American Medical Association.

Spacing
Commas, semicolons, colons and terminal punctuation should be followed by a space. But a space should NOT precede them.

Hyphens, dashes and minus
Hyphen can be inserted from the keyboard and indicates conjunction. It should never be followed or preceded by a space. We use it to mark prefixes or parts of a name of a chemical compound.

En dash is longer character and is used to indicate a range (at the age 20–35), to stand for “versus” (male–female ratio). It can be followed and preceded by a space in case that it is placed between two items containing a space (January 2010 – January 2011). This character is inserted either by code  or using the insert link under the edit field.

Em dash is even longer character than en dash and separates parts of a sentence. It is not preceded or followed by a space, however it can be replaced by en dash with spaces:


 * This muscle—the shortest muscle in the whole body—can be found…
 * This muscle – the shortest muscle in the whole body – can be found…

The em dash can be inserted either by code  or using the insert link under the edit field.

A minus sign is used for a negative sign or subtraction operator. You can insert it by the insert link under the edit field or typing code.

Quotation marks
At WikiLectures there are used “double” or ‘single’ curly quotation marks. These can be inserted by the insert box under the edit field.

Numbers
In large numbers, commas should be used to break the sequence every three places (19,000,000). However the scientific notation can be used (19 × 106) as well.

A period character should be used to separate the integral and the fractional parts of a decimal number (29,897.23).

When using percentage: use the word percent or the character %. But do not put a space before the symbol at any case (23%).

Units of measurement
You can use metric, imperial or US system of units. It should be clear, which system was used, and where it is possible, you should provide other values and units in the brackets:


 * Glycemia exceeded 7 mmol/l (125 mg/dL).

Always put a non-breaking space between the value and the unit (, can be inserted via edit button above the edit field). The space should be replaced by a hyphen only if the number with the unit forms one word:


 * This 3-centimeter gap between teeth was very uncomfortable.

Common mathematical symbols
For inserting common mathematical symbols use the insert box under the edit field. As for the minus sign, do not insert it via non-numerical keyboard (it is not a minus symbol, it is a hyphen!).

For more complicated mathematical symbols and expressions please use the special tag.