Style & mechanics

We have an editorial style for our digital products to help us keep our copy clear and consistent, and specific guidelines to write and structure content to make it easy for users to understand and act on.

Abbreviations & acronyms

Avoid abbreviations and acronyms when possible.

Adverbs and adjectives

Try to avoid adjectives and adverbs. Using adjectives and adverbs (for example, “easy” read) shapes perception and sets expectations, and can inadvertently lead to a negative emotional experience for our users.

If someone is a newer reader, then describing a book as “easy” might help them choose to read it. But if it takes them a long time to read it, they may feel bad because the book was supposed to be “easy,” and it still took them a while.

Instead, look for opportunities to capture the same meaning through other forms. What makes an “easy” book easy relative to other books? Can that be used as a scale of relative difficulty?

Active voice vs. passive voice

Use active voice and avoid passive voice. In active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action. In passive voice, the subject of the sentence has the action done to it.

Use passive voice when you don’t want to assign responsibility for an action. This can reduce tension in a message.

Present tense

Use present tense to describe the result of actions.

Capitalization

We use different forms of capitalization depending on the context.

For example, use title case for book names, and use sentence case for book descriptions. (If you’re not sure which capitalization to use, check the design system for existing conventions.)

All-caps should be used sparingly and only for specific purposes (all-caps copy is less accessible and harder to read). Never use all-caps within a sentence.

Contractions

Use contractions like “we’ll” or “there’s!” They make our writing more conversational.

However, don’t rely on contractions alone for a conversational voice. When we translate copy for our global audience, they almost won’t carry over.

Conversational writing

Our voice is conversational. When we’re talking, we connect words with articles like “the,” “for,” “these,” and “an.” If we remove these from our writing, it makes our copy feel stiff and complicated. We can be flexible, though. If space is a limitation, the article can be omitted.

Avoid directional language

Avoid any instructions or language that requires the user to see the layout or design of a page or element.

Numbers

Use the numeral when numbers appear in copy. This includes ordinals (numbers that tell the position of something in a list).

When writing in English, numbers over 3 digits get commas.

When writing in languages like German, Swedish, and Dutch, numbers over 3 digits get a period.

Dates

Spell out the day of the week and the month whenever possible. Abbreviate when space is a limitation. When abbreviated in interface headings and labels, do not use a period.

The order of day and month should match the user’s locale.

When possible, use natural language to describe dates.

Fractions

Use typographic fractions when referencing measurements in ingredients. Don’t spell fractions out.

Percentages

Use the % symbol instead of spelling out “percent.”

Ranges and spans

Use an en dash (–) to indicate a range or span of numbers. Do not use spaces before and after the en dash.

An en dash is slightly wider than a hyphen (-) but narrower than an em dash (—).

Money

When writing about US, CA, or AU currency, use the dollar sign ($) before the amount. Always include a decimal and number of cents. Do not insert a space between the dollar sign and the number.

When writing about EUR currency, use the Euro sign (€) after the amount. This applies in English, Dutch, Irish, and Maltese.

In all other official EU languages the order is reversed: first the amount, then a space and the Euro sign.

Always include a comma and number of cents. Note that English, Irish, and Maltese use a period instead of a comma. Look up local languages to confirm the correct separator for decimals.

Telephone numbers

Use dashes without spaces between numbers. Don’t use a country code.

Temperature

Use the degree symbol and capital C abbreviation for Celsius (everywhere except the USA) or capital F abbreviation for Fahrenheit (USA only). Don’t insert spaces between the number and the abbreviation.

Time

When writing about a time of the day, use numerals and lowercase am or pm, with a space in between. Use 12- or 24-hour time according to the locale. When writing in 24-hour time, show a 0 before single-digit hours.

Use an en dash (–) between times to indicate a time period. Don’t insert spaces before and after the en dash.

When referring to an amount of time, use numerals and the full word, with a space in between.

Units of measurement

In all cases, include a space between the number and the unit of measurement.

Punctuation

Apostrophes

Apostrophes are usually used to make a word possessive. If the word already ends in an s and it’s singular, you also add an’s. If the word ends in an s and is plural, just add an apostrophe.

Watch out for dumb apostrophes ('). These are a relic of typewriters, and can be identified by how they’re straight rather than curly. Always use typographic apostrophes (‘).

Colons

Use a colon to offset a list.

Commas

Use the Oxford comma when writing a list.

Dashes and hyphens

Use a hyphen (-) without spaces before and after to link words into a single phrase.

Use an en dash (–) to indicate a range or span, without spaces.

Use an em (—) dash without spaces to separate clauses in paragraph copy.

Ellipses

Use ellipses to indicate that a line of copy has been clipped before the end. This is typically used when only a single line of copy will fit, but the content itself is too long. Avoid this when possible.

When ellipses are used to clip a line of copy, clip after at least 2 characters.

Periods

Use periods in complete sentences. Don’t use periods in headlines or labels. Periods go inside quotation marks. They go outside parentheses ( ) when the contained text is part of a larger sentence, and inside when the contained text stands alone.

Quotation marks

Watch out for dumb quotation marks (' and "). These are a relic of typewriters, and can be identified by how they’re straight rather than curly. Always use typographic quotation marks (‘ and ’, “ and ”).

Places

Spell out all city names.

When written in paragraph copy, write out country, state, and province names on the first mention. On subsequent mentions, abbreviating is fine.

Positive vs. negative

Use positive language rather than negative language. Positives are easier to read and process than negatives. One way to detect negative language is to look for words like “can’t,” “don’t,” etc.

Use positive words when talking about positive things

If a sentence begins with a negative word, the sentence’s implication can be misinterpreted as negative.

Writing questions

A common error when writing questions is not constructing the sentence as a question. Usually, this can be fixed by changing the word order.

Writing about ourselves

We have a few different names depending on whether we’re referring to our legal entity or our trade name, and which market we’re writing for.

In our digital products, use our trade name for each market:

Always title case our name. Don’t abbreviate our name.

Don’t capitalize descriptive product or feature names.

Writing about people

We design and build our platforms with a human-centered point of view. Whenever we write something for our digital platforms, we need to write in a way that’s compassionate, inclusive, and respectful.

Here are some specific guidelines for how we write about people.

Disability

Avoid disability-related idioms like “lame” or “falling on deaf ears.”

Default to person-first language rather than identity-first language.

Do not use the term “edge cases” to describe users living with disabilities. This term further marginalizes people already living on the margins. Instead, use the term “stress cases.”

Gender and sexuality

Don’t call groups of people “guys.” Don’t call women “girls.”

Avoid gendered terms.

It’s okay to use “they” as a singular pronoun. If there’s no inherent purpose to specifying a gender, default to “they.”

Names

Prefer gender neutral names when referencing fictional individuals. Use names from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Hearing

Use lower-case “deaf,” “hard of hearing,” or “hearing loss” as adjectives to describe someone with hearing loss.

Vision

Use lower-case “blind” to describe someone who is unable to see. Use “low vision” or “vision loss” as adjectives to describe a person with limited vision.

Avoid words with multiple meanings

Some words to watch out for:

Once (could mean “one time,” “after,” “in the past,” or “when”)

Right (could mean “correct,” “the opposite of left,” “politically conservative,” etc.)

Since (could refer to a point in time, or a synonym of “because”)

“Require” plus an infinitive (could confuse the relationship between subject and object)

Avoid idioms

In most languages, idioms are commonly-known phrases packed with meaning. However, idioms don’t often translate into other languages. They can also create confusion for translators that have English as an additional language. It’s better to avoid using idioms at all.