SpellingConventions are important:  On the EmacsWiki, "normal"
spelling is used because just maybe the stuff will be printed one day.
In a printed work, various different spelling styles look
unprofessional.  In personal email, however, people will often use
all-lowercase spelling just because they are lazy.

Poor or non-standard spelling makes it harder for the reader to engage
in what you write because people find it unnatural to read, and writing
in small letters alone makes people take what you write less
seriously. That may or may not be important to you depending on your
personal style, but it does make refactoring harder as the refactorer
has to correct all the mechanics so they are consistent.

For wiki editors, it may therefore be important to enforce spelling
rules (by fixing the spelling of contributors), depending on the style
of the wiki.  There is a certain group pressure to follow existing
styles, so the SeedPosting""s are rather important.

Another advantage of having well-defined spelling rules is that it prevents one small class of EditWar""s.
Pages don't churn as much when there's one accepted way to spell "harbor" or "aluminum".

Contributors: AlexSchroeder, SunirShah

From the StyleGuide. See also AbbreviationsAreEvil.

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=== Spelling Conventions Particular to Meatball ===

* '''Wiki.''' For historical reasons, we have agreed that the name of this type of software is "wiki". WikiWiki, WikiWikiWeb, or even Wiki (capitalized) refers to http://c2.com/cgi/wiki, the original wiki. Individual sites are ''a wiki''; collectively, they are ''wikis''. While there is no hope of convincing the rest of the world of this convention (cf. WhatIsaWiki), at least on MeatballWiki, conforming to this policy simplifies certain discussion and prevents excessive capitalization in paragraph text, which is not good form in English. Some may question the use of "Wiki" to mean WikiWiki, and they would be right, so instead use the term WikiWiki. Don't use the term WardsWiki as that mischaracterizes the place entirely.

* '''Meatball.''' Meatball is spelt canonically as ''Meatball'', however using the LinkPattern form ''MeatBall'' is acceptable because it is cute. The MeatballLogo feeds into this. When referring to concepts that apply to Meatball at large, please prefix the pages with ''Meatball'' (e.g. MeatballLogo), but when referring to concepts that only apply to this site, please prefix the pages with the more specific ''MeatballWiki'' (e.g. MeatballWikiCopyright). This helps keep the site organized, and allows for future growth away from just this site.

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For a discussion of how to spell ''wiki'' see WhatIsaWiki.

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CategoryWikiConventions