sona pona:Guide

Policy

Be bold

If you have an idea for an edit or page, but you're not sure whether others will like it, just do it! Everyone can easily bring a page back to a previous version, so it's impossible to permanently "ruin" anything.

Be messy

An unfinished or messy page is infinitely better than no page at all. Even if you never come back to it, someone else surely will. Heck, this very guide started as barely more than an outline!

Source what you can

Unlike topics covered by Wikipedia, there aren't many public reliable sources for Toki Pona. (In fact, this very wiki was made to fill that gap!) As such, it's fine if an article doesn't have any citations, though they're always appreciated. Potential resources include:

pu and ku, if you have them
- freely-available fragments, such as the pu dictionary or "Notes on lipu pu"
other materials by jan Sonja, e.g. the tokiponization guidelines
lipu Linku
anything on the Learning resources page
the Toki Pona census

When using a proficient speaker's thoughts as a source, remember to note whether they reflect consensus or are rather their personal nasin. This includes what you may consider "official" material:

This is the way I use Toki Pona.

—pu, p. 7

Resources with open submissions, such as Tatoeba and Glosbe, often attract overconfident beginners and so should only be used carefully.

Trans rights

Formatting

In addition to standard MediaWiki formatting, note the following.

Italics

Mark emphasized text with <em>emphasized text</em>.

Mark Toki Pona text with Template:tp. For other languages, see the next section.

{{tp|mu}} outputs mu.

Mark variables with <var>variable name</var>.

For other uses, like the titles of longform works, you can use ''italic text''.

Language

Mark the language of non-English text with Template:lang.

This lets technologies like screen readers treat the text according to its language (see ISO 639-3).

{{lang|fr|''je parle bien''}} outputs je parle bien. Hover to see the language name.

Mark unitalicized Toki Pona text with Template:tok.

Italics usually help the reader distinguish between English and Toki Pona text. However, they may be unwanted for names loaned from Toki Pona, or for toki pona taso pages.

{{tp|tok}} outputs tok.

Titles

Mark a page title as italic or Toki Pona text using Template:Italic title, Template:tp title, or Template:tok title according to the guidance above.

sitelen pona

Display sitelen Lasina or UCSUR codepoints as sitelen pona with Template:sp.

{{sp|mu}} outputs . Hover or press to see the sitelen Lasina input.

Indentation

Indent with Template:Indent.

Using the : (description detail) syntax without a preceding ; (description term) produces invalid HTML, which is not accessible.