Dogri (Devanagari) style guide

Apply these local conventions alongside the house voice and localization review. Source acknowledgments are in credits.

Address and terminology

Use respectful, clear Dogri, with तुस for formal address. Keep the chosen register consistent within a surface. Use approved terms, and check disputed spellings against a Dogri reference and the actual product. Borrowed nouns need the agreement established by usage; a Latin acronym does not remove that requirement.

Tone marks and spelling

This page covers Devanagari, not the separate Dogra script. Devanagari has no uppercase/lowercase distinction, but names such as FontLab and Latin identifiers retain their case.

Use ʼ (U+02BC) for the linguistic apostrophe. In Dogri it marks high-falling tone after a short vowel; खʼल्‌ल is the marked form meaning “down”. Do not replace it with the right quotation mark ’ or delete it as decorative punctuation. Preserve the spelling and any deliberate join-control sequence when copying a verified example.

The avagraha ऽ is also meaningful: तला and तलाऽ differ. Do not merge these signs into one generic apostrophe or strip them in search text. Keep accepted spelling marks in names and borrowed words; a general preference against adding nukta does not authorize removing one from literal text.

For loading in progress, the full expression लोड होआ करदा ऐ… illustrates a state that is still continuing. Shortening it must not turn it into a command or a completed result. Review any contracted form as Dogri text, including its linguistic marks.

Abbreviations and punctuation

Familiar localized abbreviations include ओटीपी and टीवी. They do not need an abbreviation dot. Retained ROM, RAM and LAN keep their established spelling. Explain unfamiliar initialisms where readers need it; transliterating letters is not the same as explaining the term.

Do not mechanically attach an English plural ending to a localized abbreviation. Express the intended number through the complete phrase and agreement. In particular, do not change अपना to अपने without checking the surrounding noun and sentence.

Use the danda । for declarative sentences in this guide's Dogri prose, including full-sentence bullets. Keep ? and ! where their meanings apply; phrase labels need no sentence terminator. This prose convention does not replace periods inside 4.2, filenames or literal UI text.

Follow punctuation for quotations and dash choices. A quotation mark is not a tone mark. Use a real minus sign for mathematical negatives, as in −10 °C; an en dash is not an arithmetic operator.

Numbers, dates and interface review

Small numbers may be written as words in ordinary prose. Keep exact measurements, field values, version numbers and identifiers numeric. Use established symbols with a space, as in 30 cm, 1 h and 20 °C. Follow the actual locale formatter for percentage display rather than applying a blanket spacing rule to every symbol.

Use day–month–year order in ordinary numeric dates: 25/03/2025. Preserve month-and-year precision when no day is supplied. Write the conjunction ते in prose, while preserving & in protected names, tokens and literal input.

Keep disability descriptions relevant and respectful; “healthy” or “strong” does not mean “without a disability”. Avoid unnecessary gender labels on roles. Apply accessible content and interface actions, preserving the actual gesture or selection operation. Review complete messages and their substituted values with a proficient Dogri reviewer, including number, gender, state and wrapping.