Role models are important.
-- Officer Alex J. Murphy / RoboCop
One thing has always bothered me as a Latvian speaker was the poor quality of spoken Latvian language style. And I do believe that style matters. I also believe that with some nudging and expressive examples some of the ugliest offences can be corrected.
This guide started its life as my internal speaking guidelines. At some point I decided that a community-driven and community-sanctioned set of practices, idioms and style prescriptions for Latvian would be useful.
Since the inception of the guide I've received a lot of feedback from members of the exceptional Latvian community around the world. Thanks for all the suggestions and the support! Together we can make a resource beneficial to each and every Latvian speaker out there.
The Latvian style guide recommends best practices so that real-world Latvian speakers can talk in a way pleasant to other real-world Latvian speakers. A style guide that reflects real-world usage gets used, while a style guide that holds to an ideal that has been rejected by the people it is supposed to help risks not getting used at all—no matter how good it is.
The guide is separated into several sections of related rules. I've tried to add the rationale behind the rules (if it's omitted I've assumed it's pretty obvious).
I didn't come up with all the rules out of nowhere—they are mostly based on my extensive career as a professional Latvian speaker, feedback and suggestions from members of the Latvian community and various highly regarded Latvian style resources, such as TODO
There are some areas in which there is no clear consensus in the Latvian community regarding a particular style (like TODO, etc.). In such scenarios all popular styles are acknowledged and it's up to you to pick one and apply it consistently.
This style guide evolves over time as additional conventions are identified and past conventions are rendered obsolete by changes in Latvian itself.
Inspired by Rubocop