Precatio Style Guide

When submitting a new prayer (Precatio), follow these conventions. The archive preserves prayers with precision — correct classification and clean text are essential.

title

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

Correct	Incorrect
Hail Mary	A Prayer to the Blessed Virgin (invented title)
Anima Christi	anima christi (no capitalisation)
Litany of the Sacred Heart	Litany (too vague)
Prayer Before Meals	Grace Before Meals — A Short Prayer (over-embellished)

• Use the established traditional title. Do not invent one.
• Title case — capitalise principal words.
• If the prayer is known by both a Latin and English title, prefer the more widely recognised name and include the other in the text.

type

Classify the prayer into one of the recognised categories. Use exactly one of the following values:

Advent, Angels, Basic, Christ, Daily, Death, Dominican, Easter, Eucharistic, General, Holy Spirit, Lent, Marian, Mass, Penance, Scripture, St. Joseph, Trinity, Virtue

Note

Choose the most specific category that fits. A Marian prayer prayed during Advent is Marian, not Advent. A general morning offering is Daily. When in doubt, use General.

text_en and text_latin

At least one is expected. Both are welcome — many traditional prayers exist in both forms.

Formatting Rules

• Plain text or light Markdown. Paragraphs, line breaks, and emphasis are fine. No raw HTML.
• Preserve traditional line breaks. Prayers have a rhythm — do not collapse the Hail Mary into a single paragraph.
• Responses and versicles. Use V. and R. prefixes for versicle/response prayers (e.g. the Litany of the Saints):

V. Holy Mary, Mother of God,
R. Pray for us.

V. St. Michael the Archangel,
R. Pray for us.

• Rubrics. If the prayer includes instructions (e.g. “Make the sign of the cross”), set them in italics: *Make the sign of the cross.*
• Doxologies. Include the concluding doxology if it is traditionally part of the prayer (e.g. “Glory be to the Father…”). Do not append one if the prayer does not traditionally end with it.

Latin Text Conventions

• Use proper Latin orthography — no English-style punctuation quirks.
• Preserve macrons only if your source consistently uses them. Otherwise, omit them entirely — inconsistent macrons are worse than none.
• The traditional form is authoritative. Do not “modernise” Latin spelling.

tags

Optional descriptive tags for discoverability. Keep them short, lowercase, and useful:

Good tags	Bad tags
rosary, marian	prayer (redundant — everything here is a prayer)
morning, daily	Catholic (redundant — the entire archive is Catholic)
st-joseph, litany	my favorite (subjective)

Corrections

When correcting an existing prayer:

1. Search for the prayer by title to locate its record.
2. Submit only the fields you are correcting — you do not need to re-submit the entire entry.
3. Common corrections: typos in prayer text, wrong type classification, missing English or Latin text.

Caution

Do not submit copyrighted prayer texts. The archive preserves traditional and public-domain prayers. Modern compositions under copyright will be rejected.