Typographical conventions

[Susannah Skyer <susannah -at- SCO -dot- COM>]

Hi Henry,

Here are the conventions we use at SCO. (We make Unix for use
on Intel platforms; our products include SCO UNIX and SCO Open
Desktop). I have found some confusion in our use of bold italics
versus italics; it might be better just to use italics. Also,
for unix, if you're doing manpages to be read online with 'man,'
you need to make sure your replaceable parameters/placeholders
are obvious from the wording, since the reader of the online
manpages won't see the formatting (on a character terminal).

Good luck,

Susannah Skyer
Unix Doc Project Lead
SCO EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa)

boldface                commands
                        manpage section names follow entities
                        with manpages (on first reference).
                        these are reduced 1 point.
                        for example: cat(C); chmod(S)

                        literal user input (what user should type)

italics                 directory and filenames

bold italics            placeholders
                        such as (login: _yourname_)

courier                 screen displays; other computer output

                        C structure members/elements

reverse video           items that are highlighted in character
                        menus

"" (typ. quotes)        data values
                        (for example, ... where the value is
                        "O" for a display adapter or "1" for
                        a serial port)

                        jargon (such as, "master" tty; "slave" tty)

                        document section names

small caps              acronymns

bold small caps         shell variables

                        named constants

<Key>                   Keys appear in angle brackets, such as:
                        <Esc>

bold courier            C structures, such as:  the _u_area_ data
                        structure

[options]               items in square brackets in manpage
                        syntax lines (and sometimes in other
                        descriptions of commands) are optional