Acadēmīa:Latin conventions

Guidelines

This page explains the conventions for texts written in Latin. In general, the Acadēmīa follows a spelling convention based on current usage. Cases of doubt and deviations are documented and clarified here.

Letters

v and j

The letters v,j should be used to distinguish them from u and i. Deviating from this:

the compounds "su", "gu", and "qu" should not be written as "sv", "gv", and "qv".
j should not be doubled, if it is between two vowels (e.g. cujus not cujjus)
In poetic texts or texts with metrical clauses, words should be written as the meter suggests (e.g., "Italjam" instead of "Italiam" in Virgil, Aeneid v. 2).

Macrons

To avoid homographs (e.g., "nōvī" vs. "novī"), macrons should be used consistently. Breve, however, which can be found in some older dictionaries, is not preferred. The following points should be noted:

Macrons should be set as they most commonly appear. Iambic shortenings should not appear in the lemma, but can appear in written text.

Sonus medius

The sonus medius is usually rendered as i, but can also be written as u. (documentum vs. docimentum). There are no fixed rules.

Word spelling

In general, attested and/or more commonly used forms should be preferred.

Archaic words

Archaizing forms may appear in the text, but generally should not be used as headings or lemmas.

cum/quum/quom

We recommend writing "cum" if it is used as a preposition, and "quum" if it is used as a conjunction. This also makes the etymological proximity to forms like "quondam" etc. more visible. The archaizing use of "quom" is also permitted.

Compound spelling

Words (or morphemes) should always be written together as the Latin word accent suggests. In unclear cases or cases with multiple spellings, all spellings are acceptable.

Elisions

Elisions are usually not represented (e.g. tē amō not t'amō). We therefore recommend e.g. magnō opere instead of magnōpere.

Enclitics

Enclitics are always connected with the word to which they are attached.

Compositions

Phonetic changes that happen in composites should be made visible in the writing (e.g. conlegere not cumlegere). This does not apply to words in which both forms are common or in usage (e.g. inlustris vs. illustris).

Capitalization

Sentence beginnings should be always capitalized.
Nouns or nominal phrases that denote or refer to exactly one entity (e.g. Rēgnum Foederātum) are to be capitalized, with the exception of pronouns and conjunctions. The same applies to adjectives derived from such nouns or nominal phrases.
This excludes nominal phrases that refer to exactly one entity only by the addition of a demonstrative pronoun (e.g. hic ōrātor is written in lower case even though it refers to exactly one person).
Adjectives should be capitalized if they are part of or perceived as part of what is being referred to. (e.g. Hibernia Septentriōnālis is capitalized because it refers to a specific region, Northern Ireland. In contrast, the adjective is lowercased in Eurōpa septentriōnālis because it does not denote a firmly enclosed area, but only an approximate region of Europa and is thus not a part of the proper name.)

Since these rules seem a bit abstract, here are some examples of nouns that are to be capitalized:

Names of regions, states, cities subnational entities;
Mountains, rivers, seas, lakes, geographical terms;
Organizations, partys, clubs societies;
Nations and adjectives derived from Nations.

Punctuation

Main clauses

Main clauses are separated by a period, exclamation mark or question mark. If two main clauses are closely related, a semicolon can also be set. For better readability, we advise against the use of commata.

Subordinate clauses

Subordinate clauses are separated with commata. Since non-finite clauses (e.g. AcI, PC) are not true subordinate clauses, they should not be separated by commata.

Appositions

Simple appositions are either not set or separated by an comma. If the apposition consists of a sentence or the apposition becomes too long, it is better to use long dashes.