Good style in Lojban

Don't copy your words

ko na jai gau rapli fai lo me lo nei moi

Try making every construct in your discourse used only once. The next time you need them just refer to them:. Don't copy fragments of your discourse. Instead try to go to higher levels of abstraction to avoid that. Instead of

mi do prami .ije do mi prami mi do prami gi'e se prami I love you, and you love me.

say

mi do se xi vei pa je re prami I love you, and vice versa.

This allows for more tricky examples to be expressed using the same algorithm:

mi do se xi vei pa jonai re prami Either I love you, or you love me, but not both.

etc.

Test your work

If you wrote a text in or about Lojban check if you yourself and your friends-Lojbanists can understand it.

Think in the language and style of your readers

Imagine how others will understand your work. Are you writing for people of the same origin? Are they familiar with your style? Will they understand it?

No work is perfect

Whatever you write don't expect it to be perfect. Consider it a working draft that is open to changes in future. Do not drop your work because you think it is not perfect. Of course it is not. Write as you can. After each step in writing your text you will be able to browse it once again to see what can be done for the next step.

Good text manipulation tools

Use better tools for manipulating your text. Try writing your texts in this wiki, try Google docs or just plain text editor. You might want to use templating and variable declaration in the text for making the result programmable which this wiki allows for.

For paper pocket-books use bookmarks.

If your tool doesn't provide easy text or book generation and stops the development think of migrating to other tools.

People need easy to use products

If your product is powerful but tricky to use your readers won't use it. Sometimes a plain text without tables and images is much better than a tricky text with a lot of formatting.

Reusable texts

Write texts so that they can be used in different environments. E.g. people might want to convert your texts into other formats. It'd better that you yourself provide the with those options.

E.g. this wiki allows for exporting pages to PDF format.

Fix bad style and formatting

Fix bad formatting, wrong or incorrect explanations, poor style immediately when you see them.

Explain everything

Don't say it's impossible. Instead provide options of solving problems.

Banana belongs to a bunch

Bananas go in bunches. Discourses belong to full stories. Don't translate or write them as if they were isolated from the rest of the project.

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pragmatic_Programmer
• http://www.grobmeier.de/the-10-rules-of-a-zen-programmer-03022012.html#.U8D4YlWSy2k
• http://blog.codinghorror.com/a-pragmatic-quick-reference/
• http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/97_Things_Every_Programmer_Should_Know