General conventions
The conventions for these vocabularies are based on those governing the citation forms of terms found in the dictionary.
Case
All common nouns should be in lower case, e.g., aphid, rhinoceros beetle. All non-function words (i.e., substantives, verbs, adjectives) occurring in proper noun phrases should begin with an upper case letter, e.g., Plato, Food and Agriculture Organization, Big Mac, except if they occur as the initial word of the phrase, e.g., Of Human Bondage. Phrase-initial the should be dropped. Acronyms should generally occur in upper-case, e.g., WWW, except when they have been lexicalized as words in their own right, e.g., radar.
Number
All nouns should be in the singular with the exception of such cases as false plurals, e.g., telecommunications, proper nouns occurring in the plural, e.g., Pacific Islands, and special terminologies, e.g., Chordates. All relation names should occur in the singular, e.g., daughter of, grows in.
Hyphenation
A variety of rules exist concerning hyphenation (e.g., with the exception of words containing prefixes such as ex-, self-, and all-, most prefixed words should not occur with hyphens) but a general recommendation is to consult a dictionary when in doubt.
