Opus Style Guide

When submitting a new book or treatise (Opus), follow these conventions. The archive parses your Markdown into individual chapters — precision in structure is non-negotiable.

`title`

The canonical title of the work as it is traditionally known.

Correct	Incorrect
Confessions	The Confessions of St. Augustine (redundant — the `author` field handles that)
The Imitation of Christ	Imitatio Christi (use the English title if submitting an English text)
City of God	city of god (no capitalisation)

Use the title appropriate to the language of the text you are submitting.
Title case — capitalise principal words.
Do not embed the author’s name in the title.

`author`

The name of the original author — not the translator.

Use the canonical English form: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Leo XIII.
If the author is anonymous or disputed, leave blank.

`language`

ISO 639-1 two-letter code for the language of the submitted text. Defaults to en if omitted.

Code	Language
`en`	English
`la`	Latin
`grc`	Ancient Greek
`fr`	French

`translator`

If the text is a translation, provide the translator’s name. Leave blank for original-language texts.

`year_of_edition`

The publication year of the specific edition or translation you are submitting. Not the year the work was originally written.

`description`

A brief (1–3 sentence) description of the work and its significance. This appears in search results and API responses.

Markdown Structure

Your Markdown is automatically parsed into chapters. Every heading becomes a separate chapter in the archive.

Heading Hierarchy

# Part Title           → Top-level chapter
## Chapter Title       → Sub-chapter (nested under #)
### Section Title      → Sub-section (nested under ##)

Body text follows each heading and belongs to that chapter.

Example

# Book One

## Chapter I — On the Existence of God

That God exists can be proved in five ways.
The first and most manifest way is the argument
from motion...

## Chapter II — On the Simplicity of God

Having recognized that a certain thing exists,
we must inquire into its mode of existence...

Rules

Every heading starts a new chapter — the heading text becomes the chapter title.
Sub-headings (##, ###) are nested under their parent heading.
Standard Markdown is supported — paragraphs, block quotes, emphasis, lists.
Do not use raw HTML — only Markdown syntax.
The first heading should be # (top level).
Do not use headings for emphasis — only for structural divisions of the text.
Preserve the original chapter and section divisions of the source work. Do not restructure or merge chapters.

Footnotes

If the source text contains footnotes, use standard Markdown footnote syntax:

This is a claim that requires citation.[^1]

[^1]: Source reference or explanatory note.

`public_domain_attestation`

The archive accepts works whose copyright has expired — generally those published before 1929 (US) or whose authors died more than 70 years ago (EU/UK). Papal encyclicals and official Church documents are also accepted.

Corrections

When correcting an existing chapter:

Search for the book by title, then locate the specific chapter.
Select the record you want to correct from the search results.
Submit the corrected text.
Common corrections: OCR transcription errors, missing paragraphs, garbled footnotes, broken formatting.