| Background |
When I
took on the job of copy editor for the National
Space Centre, I volunteered to compile a house style and dictionary. The
editing project was going to last many months and no one had given much thought to the
capitalisation of 'universe' and 'Solar System', let alone whether to write 'km' or
'kilometres'.
Consistency is to copywriters what impartiality is to judges. But it has to be
documented so that everyone knows we're writing 'low Earth-orbit' instead of
'low-Earth orbit'.
The space dictionary eventually ran to about 600 items, and the house style to well
over 50 separate rules. Of course, no one apart from me ever followed them…
Amateurs! |
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P
Pan-Ku (primeval giant of Chinese mythology)
penguin suit (worn at formal events aboard the ISS?)
pi (maths and Greek)
Pioneer
Planet Earth (Space Centre gallery)
Planet X (the planet that astronomers were searching for when they found Pluto)
Planets, The (Space Centre gallery)
plant-life
Pluto-Kuiper Express
polar-orbiting
pole(s), the (general reference)
pole, magnetic
Pole, North and South (geographic location)
power-up (verb)
pre-astronauts
prelaunch
pre-mission (as in ‘pre-mission training’)
pressure suit
Principia, the (short title of Newton’s work)
program (as in computer software and 'space-flight program')
Proxima Centauri
Q
QinetiQ (British company that does it big with ion thrusters)
QuikSCAT
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© National Space Centre 2001 |
