This section outlines fundamental style rules that apply to the Ed-Fi Academy material.

General

Primary Reference

The Ed-Fi Alliance uses the AP Style Guide as a base, with a few exceptions. The more glaring exceptions are noted herein.

Ed-Fi Style Guide

For technical and Ed-Fi Specific terms not covered herein, we use the /wiki/spaces/TECHPUB/pages/20612734 as a base. 

The article /wiki/spaces/TECHPUB/pages/20612742 contains guidance on Ed-Fi technologies, products, and services. The /wiki/spaces/TECHPUB/pages/20612743 contains common terms and usage.

In a fight between the Technical Documentation Style Guide and this document, this document wins for all Academy-related content.

Technical Best Practices

By design, the technology details in Academy courses adhere to a set of field-tested best practices. See the Technical Best Practices section for details.

For the most part, the technical best practices are...technical. However, content creators for Program Track courses should be aware of the guidance to ensure that examples and conceptual discussions do not conflict with the guidance.

Video Courses

 So that content is not blocked by subtitles (closed-captioning), avoid using bottom 1/5 of screen.

Editing Scripts for Videos, Narrated Courses, and Spoken-Word Content

Conversational Voice

Spoken-word scripts will, of course, be spoken aloud. The Ed-Fi Alliance is going for a conversational tone, speaking as one might speak to a colleague or event attendee (as opposed to a formal lecture). 

In addition, this gives us license to use nontechnical language to discuss concepts, so long as the meaning is clear enough. 

Pause-for-Breath Comma

A note directed at editors: In the script text, it's useful to include commas to suggest a pause in speaking or a pause for breath in voiceover. So, err on the side of leaving commas inline in scripts, they're probably intentional.