Lab conventions

File names

It is important for all files in the lab to be properly labelled so that they can be accessed by future lab members. File names should include the date last updated (in YYYY-MM-DD format), the project associated with, and a specific title (i.e., do not label files as "Bilingual Data" as that could refer to many projects within the lab). Avoid spaces and inconsistent capitalization in file names.

Here's a good example: "2022-10-03_lab-wiki_conventions-page-content.doc"

Here's a bad example: "websiteContent version 2 CLEAN final.doc"

Tidyverse

Our lab generally tries to embrace the Tidyverse packages and style guide when coding in R.

Date formatting

When using dates in the lab, always use YYYY-MM-DD format. This will prevent ambiguity around such dates as 2020-02-04 (this will always mean February 4, 2020 and NOT April 2, 2020 in our lab).

Snakecase

In R scripts, we like to use snake case, which means using all lowercase letters separated by underscores when naming variables and functions. this_is_snake_case

Study shortnames

All our lab studies have formal names, like "Trilingual Vocabulary" or "Bilingual Families Project". For file naming and generally referring to studies in the lab, we tend to use shortname versions of these, which are determined early on in the project before data collection begins (TriVocab and BFP are the shortnames for the two above). Always use a consistent shortname when saving data—for example, don't save some data with "TRI-vocab" and some with "TriVocabulary", as this will make data analysis more challenging.