I am pleased to announce the following with Brian Teeman leading this overdue and needed core en-GB standardisation.

The PLT have accepted the proposal to review and standardise all the en-GB language strings in the core of Joomla based on the style guide that you can see here (until it gets a permanent home).

Abstract

• The official language of Joomla is en-GB and yet the actual strings we use have been created, over 10 years, many by people who are not native en-GB speakers.
• Create a style guide to standardise the correct usage of en-GB and assist anyone writing language strings for Joomla.
• A secondary aim is that this style guide can be used as a basis for translation teams.
• Traditional rules of grammar do not always apply to the web. See Break Grammar Rules on Websites for Clarity

Purpose

• Establish official style guidelines for writing en-GB strings.
• Ensure consistency throughout Joomla.
• Provide translation teams with an easy framework and guidelines to create their own style guides.
• See NNG on American vs British english for the web
• The style guide is a living document that may be updated and added to over time as the need arises.
• The style guide will be maintained by native en-GB speakers.

Work

Stage 1

1. Consistency
2. Punctuation
3. Words to watch
4. Capitalisation

Nothing in Stage 1 will effect Translation Teams

Stage 2

1. Tooltips
2. Module and plugin descriptions
3. Manager
4. Action or Description

There may be items in Stage 2 that will effect Translation Teams

Stage 3

1. Create a home for the style guide
2. Create ability for TT to fork the style guide and host centrally
3. Formulate a process for en-GB team to review any new or changed string before it is committed to core.

Stage 4

1. Promote style guide to extension and template developers to encourage them to adopt it.

Thanks to those already involved and their hard work towards bringing about these changes.