Ice English

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Ice English is the official language of The Eternal Union. It is a variant of Stevidian, and is most commonly described using the University of Redwell's "Universal Specifications for Ice English" (USIE). The language was adopted as the official language of The Ice States in 1194, and has continuously retained that status since.

An alternative variant of Ice English, known as Ormont English due to being specified by the University of Ormont's "Conventions of Ice English", uses different spelling and grammar conventions than in traditional Ice English; however, its use is frowned upon in formal contexts. The Legislative Standardisation Act passed in 1421 by The Eternal Union prohibits use of anything other than Redwell-specified Ice English in legislation, with the Speaker being required to administratively amend legislation to be in compliance with the Universal Specifications for Ice English.

Conventions

Spelling

Ice English relies on conventional English spelling as used within Stevid; -ize, -yze and variants thereof are never used, with -ise and -yze instead preferred in all cases. Likewise, Ice English prefers all use of -our instead of -or, eg colour vs color. Ormont English uses the same conventions except for utilising -ize instead of -ise (but not -yze). The use of serial commas is discouraged by the USIE except where omission would result in an ambiguity; however, its use is always mandatory in Ormont English. Commas should never be used between digits of numbers, eg 10000000 should be used instead of 10,000,000.

Acronyms

Acronyms and abbreviations are exclusively in capital letters where they refer to something specific. The exception is where they can be pronounced as one word, in which case capitalising every letter is optional as long as the very first letter is capitalised. Latin abbreviations, with the exceptions of AM and PM, should never be capitalised. Contractions, including initials, should always include a period at the end, with Mr. and John D. Smith as examples specified in the USIE.

Italics and other emphasis

Words not written in English included in a primarily Ice English text must always be italicised, with the sole exception being Latin abbreviations; examples given in the USIE including inter alia vs cf. In legal contexts, the USIE specifies that active verbs, including "Whereas", as well as enacting clauses, be italicised and in sentence case. In legal contexts, text should also never be bolded or underlined except for section headings, which must be bolded with a colon separating the heading from the Section content itself.

Punctuation