User:Randomstaplers/CFR Style Guide

This page documents the working stylistic decisions made (mostly by me at the moment... yeah) when transcribing the Code of Federal Regulations (of historical interest). It's in my user space for now, because I'm currently the only one working on this, so there's no consensus yet. Thus, the language may be less formal than you may expect from official documentation.

Feel free to edit this, after letting your reasons be known on the talk page, if you want to propose changes other than copyediting.

Finally, if you feel like something is wrong, let me know, here or on my talk page. The methods I have done here are to make sure people can understand why certain (odd) choices are made. And the help documentation doesn't exactly shed a light on the current consensus here either...

Nobody likes to guess. So in the interest of transparency, let's continue...

A quick primer on transclusion

In summary, Wikisource uses 'page:' space and 'index:' space to allow other editors to transcribe books with assistance from the MediaWiki software, without have to copy-paste from the editor's own OCR software.

To start the transcription of a CFR book, upload it first to Wikimedia Commons. Go back to Wikisource, then search 'Index:whatever.file' and create an index. Follow the Wikisource documentation on creating an index: Help:Page numbers. Alternatively, you could view this example: Index:30 CFR 1993.pdf, and press 'preview pagelist.'

Title 1 Style

Edits directly on Wikisource mainspace.
No § symbol!

'Title Filler' Style (8, 15, 29, 31, 32, 40, 49)

Mostly composed of links to other sites

Title 30 Style

Title 30 is mostly focused on speed rather than formatting accuracy. Because there's way too much stuff for me to go through... by myself...

For each page, add labels where one CFR Part transitions to another. Like this:
Transcription of page 11:

Part 1, law law law
<section begin="p2" />
Part 2, law law law
<section end="p2" />
(end of page)

Alternatively, you could add:

Part 1, law law law
## p2 ##
{{break}} (don't forget this, otherwise sections will be broken when transcluded)
Part 2, law law law
(end of page)

and it would be like:

Part 1, law law law
<section begin="p2" />
Part 2, law law law
<section end="p2" />
(end of page)

'Part 2' continues on the next page, but you must add a closing tag for each page of each section. By doing this, you can use the Mediawiki transclusion template. In main space, it goes something like this:

Assume Part 1 begins on page 10, and ends in the middle of Page 11, kind of like the transcription above. To transclude, use these templates:

(header)
{{#lst:Page:CFR.pdf/10}}
{{#lstx:Page:CFR.pdf/11|p2}}

This will exclude 'Part 2' from the 'Part 1' page in main space.

Transcription of sections and subsections

Note that by doing this, the 'Source' link up top will be broken, and you'll be directed, instead, to the CFR book's index.

With regards to transcribing sections in 'Page:' space, here's a quick guide:

Heading 2 should be used for subchapters.
Heading 3 should be used for Parts, including the Parts "Sec." contents just before the text of the Part begins.
Heading 4 should be used for be used for subsections
DO NOT use headings or create sections for the pages at the beginning of the CFR book, or the main table of contents at the start. Just stylize it like any other book on Wikisource.

One more thing: if you want to exclude the subchapter title text when transcluding, use the following template:

{{#lsth:Page:CFR.pdf/10|SUBCHAPTER B—GIANT SUBCHAPTER TITLE}}

Transcription of the first table of contents, without sections

Use Template:Pright. It should look something like this page: Page:30 CFR 1993.pdf/6

Page numbers

Add them in the header or footer with Template:Rh.

Double Columns?

No. Just... no. Some validated books don't even use double columns...

Main space

The Header

If it's the first section, the 'previous' parameter should link to the chapter navigation page, etc, etc.

The Notes

Besides getting your sourcing right...
If you got a whole bunch of chapters scanned, place Template:commons link in the chapter navigation, and in all subpages. Place it at the end of the 'notes' parameter in the header. Here's an example header:

{{header
 | title    = [[../../|Code of Federal Regulations]]
 | author   = |override_author=the United States Government
 | section  = [[../|Chapter I]], Chapter I—Mine Safety and Health Administration, Department of Labor
 | previous = [[../|Chapter I]]
 | next     = [[../Part 5|Part 5. Fees for testing, evaluation, and approval of mining products]]
 | notes    = From the U.S. Government Printing Office on [https://books.google.com/books/edition/The_Code_of_Federal_Regulations_of_the_U/hP86AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 Google Books], revised as of July&nbsp;1, 1993. {{Commons link|30 CFR 1993.pdf}}
}}

Categorization

If you're starting a new Title, make a new category, 'Category:Code of Federal Regulations, Title ##', and add the following:

{{plain sister}}
[[Category:Code of Federal Regulations]]

Don't forget to categorize your 'Index:' page too, as 'Code of Federal Regulations, Title ##'!

TBD

I'm currently using 'TBD' whenever I don't feel like adding a bunch of links on a given day.