All of the italicized examples are from texts that I've written or adapted. Feel free to "steal" them but give me an "inspired by" credit if you do.
1.
Use only the given names of the Kings and
Queens, not their full SCA names.
2.
Open with a greeting from the Crown.
[name] and [name], King and Queen of the East, to all good people of
our land, greetings.
[name], King by right of arms, and [name], his Queen, to all to whom
these present letters come, greetings.
3.
Refer to the Crown’s authority to give awards,
or to the Crown who created the award.
The King and Queen of the East are charged by ancient custom with
recognizing those persons who perform great labors for the good of the Kingdom
. . . .
Forasmuch as Our predecessors of blessed memory Viktor and Sedalia
created and constituted the Order of the Sagittarius to honor and acknowledge
excellence with arrow and bow . . .
4.
Use multiple (usually three) verbs and nouns
that mean more or less the same thing (buy a good literary Thesaurus!)
We
hereby award, invest and endow [person] with the Order of the . . . .
and
all rights, privileges and advantages . . .
forasmuch
as our good and honorable [person] has proven himself to be diligent, doughty,
vailaunt and laudable,
and
we do further command, instruct and ordain that the said [person] shall
henceforward bear the emblem of the Order upon his person in sign and token of
the establishing of him therein
5.
Is today a saint’s day for the recipient’s
persona or culture? Check out the
Online Calendar of Saints Days (http://medievalist.net/calendar/home.htm),
which tells you the medieval saint’s feasts for each calendar day and the region
in which that saint was honored.
For example, the entry for November 14 has
(among many others) the following:
Modanus, bishop, confessor [GTZ:
Scotland]
When writing a text for a Scottish
persona, you would refer to November 14th as “the feast of Saint Modanus”
6.
Avoid SCA-isms like “troll” or “feastocrat” or “autocrat”
in favor of more general (and period!) terms like “gatekeeper” or “cook” or “steward.”
7.
Refer to the fact that the award recipient is
getting rights and privileges in addition to the award, such as the right to
wear the badge of the Order upon his/her person.
8.
Refer to the fact that we write things down to
make sure they are remembered.
Because
human memory is fallible, and knowledge of works done may be lost to time, good
and notable deeds should, in a plenitude of wisdom, be committed to writing.
Lest
the good and noble deeds of [person] be lost to the passage of time, we have
caused these matters to be rendered in writing.
That
the present award may be held firm by all our successors, we have had the
present page drawn up and have fortified it with the authority of our ensigns
manual upon 10 September in the fifty-first year of the Society.
