I'm somewhat linguistically inclined, and also very fond of the golden rule. So here I'm introducing as much of serbian orthography as anglophone businesses have roughshod into it. Sticking with symmetry, that is.
So:
- capitalization is serbian. That means only the first word of any multi-word title, names of people, places, institutions get an initial capital letter. Names of days, months, positions, professions and what have you are not personal names and not toponyms, so lowercase. Likewise, when a name of a day or a month is used as a temporal adverb, it's always used with a preposition. I hate constructs without them - if „the series ends monday“, well, what else can it end? The year? Also, it it ends monday around 21:55, what happens with the remaining 125 minutes of that monday, are they skipped, reassigned to tuesday, blank in the calendar, don't happen at all? I hate messing with the calendar.
- nationals' names are propercased and made equal. In plural, they have a suffix, because then they are nouns (Italian - Italians, German - Germans, Chinese - Chineses etc)(this is recent, so expect exceptions). Names of languages and other such attributes are adjectives, not names, hence lowercase. In several other similar situations, when I'm not sure, I may assume that a rule applies - I'm 70 now and you can't expect me to remember all of the exceptions (which are The Rule, I know). I just wrote „several specieses“ somewhere, so what. „Crosroadses“ may be next.
- Names originating in english language are brought as they were, unless serbian phonetic transcription matters in the narrative. Derived names are phonetic, i.e. I won't stick a serbian suffix to something containing unphonetic spell, you won't se a Bellewljev here - I find mixing scripts in a single word to be in extremely bad taste.
- Other names are either in their original script, which I did initially, or phonetic, to which I switched when I discovered that I can't have any non-Latin here, so I would have to discriminate against any cyrillic, chinese, japanese, arabic, greek, israeli or whomever didn't fit. So that one is a mixed bag. In fifteen years I didn't have a strict policy to stick to. Since 2023 I can have cyrillic etc here, having switched to Python and utf-8, but then there was already fifteen years of text, so in most cases I left it as it was.
- I write as I speak. In many cases the text is almost word for word my oral retelling of the event. The language (in serbian version more than english) is somewhat complying to the mores of the times, so a guy may be a frajer, tip or lik, depending on the decade and sources, but I'm not enforcing it strictly, as it would require too much time and attention. I'm also not avoiding cunts, dicks and others, because I simply won't allow any religion out there to dictate my language. Have a nice day, all you readers that I lost this way.
- similarly, where I translate from serbian, I may use english words in the meaning they have in serbian and may also have in english, as in „the nicest ends of the country“, the „ends“ here being as in „west end“. If that creates some confusion, well, sorry about your language.
- In the same vein, words like becunted, discunted etc are not curses, they are literal translations of common words in serbian, which may have been considered slang in sixties or seventies, but have long ago gained full citizenship. They are avoided only in serious newspapers, if such a beast still pretends to exist.
- Dates are in classic yugoslav format, dd-RRR-yyyy, where RRR is the roman numeral for the month. We had such a date on our coat of arms between 29-XI-1943 and the disollution of SFRY.
- Day has 24 hours, not 12+12. While we colloqually use the shorthand 12 hour format, it is generally used only when unambiguous, or with „ujutro“ (in the morning) or „uveče“ (in the evening) - both are too long in english, and I really hate the AM/PM, as it makes no sense in the first hour of each halfday, and also needs more typing.
- The articles other than dates and this intro, I qualify with type and country. The countries I left as they were when I became aware of them. So you won't find the pieces of the broken up SFRY or USSR. The one exception is Germany, where I keep only one - which may mean western, eastern, or united, depending on context. The context is the most dependable source of semantics in english, anyway, so why not.
- Numbers are in european format, decimal comma and point as a thousands separator. Ordinal numbers are in english. One exception is that the years are ordinal numbers in serbian and I write them with a dot, but in english I kept them as they were. In serbian, I write the number words the way I pronounce them, so twony (20), fisix (5-6) etc are regular here.
- Units are metric, except in the period where I kept the native units for that local color, or to translate the confusion I was in. One unit I had trouble with is „komad“, which I found officially translated only once, as in „canteloupes, 3$ each“. Not a piece nor apiece, but each. So where you find „eaches“ in the text, I'm sticking to this.
- Amounts are either expressed in international banking units (DEM, EUR, CAD) or postfixed as $ and € (for dollar and euro). There are some dolar amounts prefixed, but that's where I didn't find them during the cleanup, or where they're part of a quote; in those cases, again, a flair of native color. I love them natives everywhere.
- acronyms are often written as they are pronounced - emessdyenn, scuzzy, Beebysea, unless within quotes. This is in accordance with the rule in english that gives you proseejers, abbr. procks. Likewise in serbian, just simpler, as it's phonetic to start with: emezdien, skazi, Bibisi.
- At some point around 2021 I just gave up on translating trešnja and višnja as sweet cherry and sour cherry; in proper english these expressions are rarely used, and there's almost no awareness that these are separate specieses which don't interbreed. Even the Gugao and yandex translators translate „trešnje i višnje“ and „višnje i trešnje“ as „cherries and sour cherries“ regardless. So when I say „cherries and cherries“, the meaning is not the same in each instance.
- Between the beginning and about 1800th article I was writing this in english only, then went on to translate to serbian as well, then started writing in serbian first and then translating into english. In the latter case you may find english a bit more colorful and sometimes even confusing, because I was trying to respect the writer's idiom and preserve that color. Also, words which are needed in the translation but weren't there in the serbian original, will often be in square brackets, so „he put [his] glasses in [his] pocket“, because why the fuck would Joe take Jack's glasses and put them in Jim's pocket.
- when translating texts of emails, chats and such, I try to preserve the writer's punctuation and as much color as I can. Works in both directions. This also means that in many cases, when the serbian source is actually engrbian, without diacriticals, in serbian version I translate it into cyrillic as is, and in english version I omit any aitches not preceded by a vowel, and shorten any double consonants to single, just to translate the experience one gets reading it.
- when talking of filesystems, the word „folder“ applies only to atarist and Linux. Anything m$ has directories, because I was told, on sezam, in 1991, „it's a directory, always was a directory and it will always be a directory and it will never be a folder, and you can shove your Atari up your ass“. And I respect the sentiment and strength of belief - besides, in CMD, there's still the DIR command and no FOL command, right? Now I'll have to search and replace, to retroactively apply this matter of style. [evenutally did, end of february 2023]
Since spring 2022 the pages may originate in either language, or even both, happens when I wrote one from memory and the other from sources, then later noticed the differences and ironed them somehow. This often goes in both directions on the same article, it's random. See Byo.
Since june 2024 I added the paired dates at bottom right, but the newer date doesn't necessarily mean I edited the article on that day - it's possible that one of the linked people, places or things had some change, perhaps a case added, which then cascades into refreshing each article where that is mentioned. If one such is mentioned in hundred places, hundred articles get tagged with the new date. I know I could have added a separate date field for that „not changed but needs to be generated“, but I already have four such fields (times two, for serbian version as well), so no, won't happen.
I will revoke many of these rules when Gugao, m$ et al fully comply to our grammar when operating here - go fully cyrillic, write their names phonetically, use european date and number formats, stop enforcing their own meanings of words etc. That'll mean a lot of work for me, but I live to see the day.
Other than that, there's no style to this, I have none. I write as I speak.
This page is barely half of this in serbian.
6-VII-2022 - 24-V-2026