curiousFor work, I'm putting together a proofreader "style guide" for when we do desktop publishing/layout of translated documents. However, it's a pain in the you-know-what to find decent resources for different languages, or at least I haven't had much luck so far. What I'm asking is if anyone knows of any websites that deal with typesetting/style rules for different languages, or books, or any other resources. The kind of stuff I'm looking for is:
- when you have a line break, where in a word is it OK to stick a hyphen?
- how do you do date/time/units of measurement format?
- what are the language's punctuation/quotation marks, and the rules that govern it?
- same deal, for spacing, or capitalization? (if the language doesn't capitalize, what would be an appropriate substitute?)
- are there cases where it's not okay to break a line? (ex. separating a word from its case-ending particle)
- can you tell me some common abbreviations?
- any other peculiarities or conventions that I should know about?
That kind of thing. Right now, I'm especially concentrating on European, East and Southeast Asian, and Indian languages, but any and all feedback is welcome. You can either shoot me an email at zepooka@yahoo.com or I guess comment here if you know of any convenient resources, or if you just feel like clueing me in to a rule. Thanks very much in advance for your help. :)
(x-posted to
linguafags)