Maithili (India) style guide

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

Address and terminology

Use respectful, friendly Maithili. Address the reader as अहाँ in formal product writing. Keep the register consistent; do not switch to a familiar pronoun merely to shorten a message. Use approved terminology and an appropriate Maithili reference when spellings differ.

A natural sentence may change English word order. It must still preserve the actor, object, condition and uncertainty. Replacing “their document” with “document” can erase ownership. दस्तावेज is a noun, not an article that can automatically replace a possessive phrase.

Spelling and linguistic marks

This page covers Maithili in Devanagari. There is no uppercase/lowercase distinction in that script. Retained Latin names, abbreviations and identifiers keep their required case.

The linguistic apostrophe ʼ (U+02BC) can mark length or truncation; it is distinct from the quotation mark ’. Preserve it in accepted spellings and review contractions in context. The avagraha ऽ also has a linguistic function. Neither mark is decorative punctuation to delete during cleanup.

Do not introduce a nukta simply because an English or Hindi spelling suggests one. Equally, do not apply automatic mark deletion to accepted terms, personal names, quoted text or protected identifiers. Keep a verified spelling intact. See scripts and typography for text identity and rendering checks.

Abbreviations and punctuation

Use abbreviations only when their meaning remains clear. Localized examples include किग्रा, किमी, मिमी and सेमी; न. has an abbreviation dot. These word abbreviations are different from international unit symbols such as kg, km, mm and cm, which keep their fixed spelling and do not acquire abbreviation dots or plural endings.

Keep familiar forms such as PIN, ID, IT and Wi-Fi unchanged. Explain an unfamiliar acronym in Maithili and give its established acronym in parentheses. A phonetic rendering of its letters is not an expansion of its meaning. When the source refers to several organizations or machines, retain that number in the complete phrase; do not infer a Maithili plural algorithm from NGOs or ATMs alone.

Use the danda । for declarative sentences in this guide's Maithili prose. Commas, question marks and exclamation marks retain their respective functions. Full-sentence bullets take sentence punctuation; short phrases do not. Do not replace a period inside 4.2, a filename or other literal text with a danda.

Apply punctuation to surrounding prose. Recast cumbersome dash-separated sentences. Use quotation marks for actual quotations, not decorative emphasis or a substitute for the guide's UI formatting.

Numbers, dates and interface review

Small numbers can be words in ordinary prose; exact measurements and values that readers must enter remain numeric. Use 30 cm, 1 h and 20 °C, keeping the value with its symbol. The minus sign in −10 °C is not an en dash. Use the locale formatter for percentages and test its actual output instead of assuming every symbol follows one spacing rule.

Use day–month–year order for ordinary numeric dates, as in 26/03/2025. If only a month and year are given, do not supply a day. Use आ or आओर as the conjunction in prose; retain & in protected names, tokens and literal input.

Avoid unnecessary gender labels, without erasing a relevant person, role or ownership relation. Follow accessible content and preserve the required interface action. चुनू identifies selection; it cannot replace every gesture regardless of what the user must do. Test substituted values, complete count messages and wrapping with a proficient Maithili reviewer.