Pravdateam

This is a style guide for the English Version of Ukrayinska Pravda.

Titles
Capitalize a title when it comes before a name, as in:

President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree.

Do not capitalize a title when it comes after a name, as in:

Viktor Yushchenko, the president of Ukraine, issued a decree.

Do not capitalize a title when it refers to the office and is not accompanied by a name:

No one knows who the next president will be.

Commas
Commas will be used only once per series:

Tymoshenko, Yushchenko and Yanukovych are rivals.

Quotations
In Ukrainian, quotations usually involve a lot of punctuation. In English, only one comma is used, and when it is, it is used inside the quotation marks:

''“I enjoy eating salo, but only if it is progressive and socialist salo,” said Natalia Vitrenko, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party.

“I am the president of Ukraine,” said President Yushchenko.''

The words used after a quote are very tricky, because they can describe a large variety of different emphases. The order in which they are used, however, is fairly consistent. The verb comes first and then comes the name of the person speaking. This is true, except when the speaker is referred to by a pronoun. In that case, the pronoun comes first:

''“I am the president of Ukraine,” said Yushchenko. “I am the president of Ukraine,” he said.''

A few common words: казати to say He said. відзначити to remark He remarked. підкреслити to emphasize, to underscore He emphasized. повідомити to inform, to notify Do not use “He informed.” Choose another. пояснити to explain He explained. додати to add He added. заявити to declare He declared

Special note on quotation marks: Use quotation marks sparingly if there are no words directly being quoted. Quotation marks are unnecessary for such things as:

Our Ukraine People’s Union (in Ukrainian Народний Союз „Наша Україна”)

Proper Nouns
See a separate section for more details.