Conventions

Conventions are widely accepted practices or standards that guide behavior, communication, and agreement within a community. They may be informal, unwritten norms, or formalized rules established through documents, codes, or treaties. Conventions help reduce ambiguity, improve coordination, and support interoperability across individuals, organizations, and nations.

Social and cultural conventions cover everyday etiquette and expectations—greeting practices, dress codes, table manners, and respect for personal space. Linguistic conventions govern language use, including spelling, punctuation, and idiomatic expression. Literary, theatrical, and cinematic conventions describe shared assumptions about genres, narrative devices, or staging, such as dramatic irony or the hero's journey. Scientific and mathematical conventions provide consistent notation, units, naming schemes, and experimental procedures.

International conventions refer to formal agreements between states or organizations, often aiming to standardize practices or protect common interests. These are typically codified in treaties or protocols and may become law for participating parties. Notable examples include environmental, trade, or humanitarian conventions, and historical instruments such as the Geneva Conventions. In technology, conventions appear as coding styles, file formats, and protocol standards that ensure compatibility across systems and developers, like Unicode character encoding or the HTTP protocol.

Conventions evolve over time as communities adopt new practices or reinterpret existing norms. They are distinct from laws in that they are usually voluntary or based on social pressure, though some international conventions acquire binding legal effect once ratified. Standardization bodies such as ISO, IEC, W3C, and IEEE coordinate formal conventions to promote consistency across industries.