CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributions

If you want to suggest changes for an article, create an issue. If you want to create a completely new article, check out the contribution guidelines below and make a Pull Request! If you just want to show us some love, click the star ⭐ button!

Contribuition Guidelines

By following these guidelines you're helping to keep the Aion docs consistent.

General Writing

• Address readers in the second person by using you to address them. Stay away from words like I, we, our, or one.

  You can install the virtual machine.

• Follow each list of three or more items with a comma. This is known as the Oxford or Serial Comma.

  Use	Don't Use
  One, two, three, and four.	One, two, three and four.
  Henry, Elizabeth, and George.	Henry, Elizabeth and George.

• Write clearly and concisely. Sentences should be shorter than 25 words. Any longer and things tend to get a little blurry.

• Don’t use formal or complex words when easy or short ones will do. Keeping the docs simple to read makes it accessible for everyone, especially those us whose English as a second language.

  Use	Don't Use
  Get	Aquire
  Help	Assist
  About	Approximately

• Use consistent terminology. This isn't creative writing, so you don't need to describe the same thing differently every time you mention it.

• Use American English spelling.

• Try to not use acronyms. If you absolutely have to use acronyms, spell full phrase first and include the acronym in parentheses () the first time they are used in each document.

  Decentralized Application (Dapp), Virtual Machine (VM)

• Avoid using specific version numbers whenever possible.

Formatting

All Aion documentation is written in GitHub Flavored Markdown. If you're using VSCode to write and edit documentation, you can install the MarkdownLint extension by David Anson. It helps to point out any formatting mistakes you've made in your writing.

Here are a few guidelines that will help keep everything nice and tidy.

• File names, folders, addresses, and variables should be written between code tags.

    > Copy ```example.json``` to ```~/var/www/html/aion-vm```.
  

• Things that the user must click on, or generally look out for, should be in bold.

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• Multi-line code blocks should have the language supplied in line with the markdown. This helps the syntax highlighter know which language classes to use. To select a particular language in markdown, add the language name to the end of the first code tag:

    ```python
    import example.py
    import crypto.py
    ```
  

• Capitalize all the significant words in titles

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