SF VolunteersThe website rewordify.com allows you to paste in a bit of text and then offer suggestions on ways to make the language more simple. About half of the suggestions won’t work, but there are many good ones.
Using the settings button at the bottom of the page, you can tell it what grade level you are trying to write for:
| narration | used in Vv and Pv for anything not spoken by a character |
| character | used in Vv and Pv (and otherse) for the name of the person speaking |
| verse | any verses in English |
| verse-pali | Pali verses |
| pali | Pali paragraphs |
| pali-hide | Pali that is hidden |
| verse-pali-hide | Pali verses that are hidden |
| ending-line | Ending line in some suttas indicating the end of the sutta |
These should be added here
And for most classes you will see a change in the text:
| vnumber | Verse numbers in Dhp, Thag, Thig |
If you need to type Pāli letters (āīūṭḍṇṅñṁ) on a Windows computer, go to this help article on the main site to download some software:
If you want to be able to control typing typographic characters, download this software: https://volunteers.suttafriends.org/wp-content/uploads/typography.exe
This small program is created by software called AutoHotKey. If you want to try using the original script or add characters, you can download it here. Note that you will need to install AutoHotKey to get this script to work. That is not necessary if you download the exe file above.
NOTE: Items with a * can be done by any volunteer. The other items will probably need to be done by one of the monks, but suggestions are welcome.
It’s very important that title conform to a standard. It should be
{abbreviation} {number} {Pali title} Sutta: {English title} {optional number of repetiton}
If there are several suttas in a row with the same name, just put a number after the name without parentheses or st/nd/rd/etc.
When uploading suttas in bulk, we can add all the special information easily in our word processor.
Past this immediately after the title of each sutta:
#intro #topics #similes #names #furtherReading #explanation #questionForReflection
Then you can add any relevant information. For example:
#intro We can understand the Four Noble Truths if we have concentration. #topics concentration, Four Noble Truths, happiness #similes mountain #names Sariputta Arahant #furtherReading * See also SN 56.11 #explanation #questionForReflection What do you think it's like to live this way?
NOTE: If you are not familiar with our tags, you can see a list of all tags:
NOTE: Topics, People and similes are case sensitive! So Meditation and meditation will be two different topics.
Special note for people tags: For all monks and nuns who became Arahants, please put the personal name first followed by “Arahant”. For example: Sāriputta Arahant.
For other people like kings and queens. put their personal name first then king or queen. WHY? Because then they are all listed alphabetically by name. Also, see these guidelines.
Intros are a sentence that will draw someone into reading the sutta. Sometimes they are a question that the sutta will answer. Sometimes they say briefly what the sutta is about. Some can start with “The Supreme Buddha teaches about …” but they shouldn’t all start that way. Best thing is to look at the intros as they appear on any of the table of contents pages, for example, DN, MN, Khp, Ud, Itv, Snp, Vv, Pv.
For very short suttas it can be difficult to give an intro. Just create something and the bhantes will check.
These are suttas that are related to the sutta you are preparing. Most suttas will not have a further reading section.
If the sutta for further reading actually exists on the website, you can add in the code like this:
<li><ul><a href="https:suttafriends.org/sn56.11">SN 56.11 Dhamma Cakkappavattana Sutta</a></ul></li>
and then it will look like this when imported:
Not all suttas need an explaination.
Most suttas won’t have any questions for reflection.
An excerpt is a line from the sutta that gives a good idea what the sutta is about. It should be short. When you find it, put it in [[[triple brackets]]]. Include punctuation.
If you can’t decide, then skip this step.
Each individual verse must be enclosed with % % symbols like this:
Make sure that the quotation marks are curving towards the text. Also make sure that triple dots are the real elipses character (…)
If you are working in Google Docs, then add the addon “Text Cleaner” in Google Docs. Then select the text to correct and click as follows:
In general, we want to avoid text in (parentheses). If the sentence can be read without the text in the parentheses, then please turn it into a footnote.
Simplly place, then put footnote tags around it:
This is the text of the sutta.[footnote]This is my footnote.[/footnote]
And it will end up looking like this:
And when they click on the number the footnote pops up:
If you cannot find your issue listed, please contact the bhantes to ask.
In general, we are following the guidelines in the Canadian Government style guide.
Please notice there are different sheets (tabs at the bottom) with different types of issues.
Link to the google doc
Sutta titles need to all be contained on a single line. This will require some work to get the file ready.
First, we need to delete the chapter and section titles. We are not using them. You may be able to remove them through search and replace. But BE CAREFUL! Many times the section title is the same as a sutta title and we don’t want to delete those.
Then we need to combine the Pali line and the English line.
Each title needs to start with the letter code for the citation. In the example below, it is SN. For the SN and AN, next will come the chapter number. In this example it is 55. Then we remove the period after the citation, add a colon after the Pali name, remove the number on the English line and then combine the lines together. Presto!
Then this is what we end up with:
Then finally, we need to mark this line as Heading 1 in the word processing software. This may work differently in different software.
So it is like this:
The SuttaCentral translations use non-standard quotation mark styles, so we need to fix this. The rule that they are breaking is:
If the same speaker continues from paragraph 1 to paragraph 2, do not put a close quote at the end of paragraph 1.
Here is an example where the speaker is different for each paragraph:
Here is an example where the same speaker continues through three paragraphs:
This is extremely common in the suttas, because an entire sutta could involve only the Supreme Buddha speaking.
Here is a page from the Middle Length Discourses where you can see paragraphs starting with an open-quote mark, but none of the paragraphs end with one. That’s because it’s all the Buddha talking.
If you have any doubts, please ask.
As you are fixing the quotation marks according to the above rule, you will notice that sometimes the Buddha is actually quoting someone when a new paragraph starts. You will know this because the paragraph starts with a single open quotation mark. When there is a quotation within a quotation, the quotation inside uses single quote marks:
This can get complicated, because there are times when there is a quotation within a quotation within a quotation. In that case they just alternate between double and single
“… ‘… “… ‘…’ …” …’ …”
Tricky!! When in doubt, ask. As a general rule, there will never be a situation where a paragraph starts with a single open quote. In that situation there will always have been someone reporting this speech, therefore there needs to be a double quote in front of it.
NOTE: Do not put a space between double and single quotation marks. It’s true that it will just look like three single marks. Don’t worry.