Formatting and Content

The guidelines below will help you ensure the formatting of Paraqlet content remains consistent across various touchpoints.

Lists

Lists are useful when you need to present information sequentially or emphasize key points within a larger block of text.

Whether your list is ordered or unordered, the following guidelines apply:

  • Introduce the list with a phrase ending with a colon.

  • Do not end items with commas, semicolons, or conjunctions.

  • Ensure the list includes at least two items.

  • Ensure the grammatical structure of all the items is consistent.

In addition to the above guidelines applicable to both ordered and unordered lists, some additional guidelines apply, with exceptions.

  • Capitalize the first letter of each item unless all the items have three or fewer words.

  • If the items themselves are complete sentences, end them with a period. Otherwise, leave them as is.

An exception to the above two rules is when you are documenting UI flows or writing UI labels. For more information, see Documenting UI interactions.

If you need to include examples or nonessential information in a brief list, consider using commas or parentheses to offset it. For more information, see Commas and Parentheses.

Ordered lists

Use ordered lists when the order of the items is important. Delineate each item with a number and a period.

How to bake a white cake:

  1. Gather all the ingredients. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a nine-inch round cake pan.

  2. Cream together sugar and butter in a mixing bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating them into the mixture. Add in vanilla extract.

  3. Combine together flour and baking powder in a separate bowl, then add to the wet ingredients and mix well. Add in milk and mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into cake pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake.

Unordered lists

Use an unordered list when the order of the items does not matter.

Carmen’s bakery sells the following flavors of cakes:

  • Red velvet

  • Dark chocolate

  • Lavender and lemon

  • Carrot

  • Black forest

Use regular, black circles (•) for bullet points when available. If you are working with a platform that does not support rich text, such as many social media platforms, use a single hyphen (-) to delineate each item in an unordered list. To learn more about hyphens, see Hyphens.

Avoid using fleurons, dingbats, or emojis for unordered lists, as they impact accessibility and may fail to render properly on some browsers. For more information on emojis, see Emojis.

Capitalization

Always capitalize proper nouns. A proper noun is a word that names a specific person, place, thing, or idea.

By contrast, a common noun is a word that names generic types of people, places, or things. Don’t capitalize common nouns unless the noun begins a sentence or you are writing in title-case. For more information on nouns, see Nouns and pronouns.

Title case

Use title case, where the most important words in the sentence are capitalized, when referring to:

  • People’s job titles

  • Product and service names

  • Article, essay, or magazine titles

  • Elina Kokkonen, Director of Marketing

  • The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog

Use title case for major works, and italicize the title if the platform for which you are writing content supports rich text. Otherwise, just use title case. Regardless of the platform, use sentence case and quotation marks for shorter works.

  • For platforms that support rich text: The lyric soprano’s rendition of "Quando m’en vo" from Puccini’s La Bohème raised the standard for years to come.

  • For platforms that do not support rich text: The lyric soprano’s rendition of "Quando m’en vo" from Puccini’s La Bohème raised the standard for years to come.

For more information on italics, see Italicized text.

Capitalize the word after a slash or hyphen if it is the last word in a sentence or if you would capitalize it without the slash or hyphen, respectively.

  • The World’s Most Well-Known Landmarks

  • How to Set Your Country/Region

Always capitalize the first word of a sentence, including definite articles (the) and indefinite articles (a, an).

Capitalize the first word following a colon if part of a title.

Spice Up Your Life: Traditional Sichuan Recipes for Your Next Gathering

For more information on colons, see Colons.

Don’t capitalize coordinating conjunctions or prepositions unless they are the first or last word in a sentence.

  • Striving for Connection and Community

  • And That’s the Whole Story

  • What Are We Waiting For?

For more information on conjunctions and prepositions, see Conjunctions and Prepositions.

Use title case for microcopy (e.g. error messages, notifications, button text).

  • About Us

  • Contact Us

  • Error: Page Not Found

  • Submit

Use title case for the following terms related to racial and ethnic identity.

  • Black and African American

  • Asian American and Pacific Islander

  • Filipino and Filipina

  • Hispanic, Latino, and Latina

  • Native American

  • Native Hawaiian

  • Alaska Native

  • Indigenous Peoples

Conversely, lowercase the terms multiracial and white unless you are using them to begin a sentence.

Sentence case

Use sentence case—where only the first word in the sentence is capitalized—in headings and subheadings, case studies, or articles. Proper nouns, including brand, product, and service names, are always capitalized.

  • What worked, what didn’t

  • Case study: Beyond Extraordinary

  • The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Capitalize the first word after a colon if the heading or subheading includes a colon.

Conclusion: Working at the intersection of community and impact

Typography

Using bold, italicized, or underlined text can be useful for emphasizing certain text in your content. Learn about how to properly format your text from the guidelines below.

Bold text

Use bold text for UI component labels to make them stand out from the rest of the body text. To learn more about UI documentation, see Documenting UI interactions for more information.

Another place you may use bold text is in the dialogue tags of audio transcripts. See Captions and transcripts for more information on transcribing audio.

Do not use bold text in place of headings, as this leads to screen readers not properly parse them. For more information, see Structuring content for accessibility.

Italicized text

Use italicized text to denote the names of major works, such as books.

Octavia E. Butler is known for pioneering the literary genre of Afrofuturism through novels such as Parable of the Sower, Fledgling, and Kindred.

If the platform you are using does not support rich text, simply write the names of major works in title case. For more information on formatting titles, see Title case.

Documenting UI interactions

When you describe interactions with UI, bold the label of the component you are describing. If the label includes punctuation (e.g. ellipses, question marks, commas), format that in bold as well. Include a period at the end of the description, and do not bold the period. Use the imperative mood when documenting UI interactions. To learn more, see Mood of verbs.

Use a greater-than symbol (>) to separate sequential steps. Do not bold the greater-than symbol, and be sure to include a space before and after the symbol.

Click on Profile > Settings > Notifications > Email Notifications.

For clarity and brevity, only use this method when there is a clear path through the UI that does not involve multiple different interaction methods (e.g. clicking, tapping, dragging).

If you are documenting a UI interaction with multiple different interaction methods, use an ordered list. Provide an appropriate verb for each interaction, along with the UI component label in bold typeface. Each line should include only one interaction.

Here’s how you can apply for an open position on our website:

  1. Click on About Us > Join Our Team.

  2. Enter your contact information in the form.

  3. Click Submit.

For more information on ordered lists, see Ordered lists.

Visual content

A cohesive visual identity across all our digital touchpoints, from the website to social media content, helps establish Paraqlet as professional and trustworthy.

Captions for visual content

Format captions for images and graphics in full sentences with periods at the end of each sentence. For the sake of brevity, it is appropriate to use a sentence fragment as a caption, but you should only do so if you plan on writing one line.

Besides the allowance for sentence fragments in single-line captions, ensure captions follow the guidelines set out in Grammar and Mechanics.

Though your captions should be brief, they should also be descriptive enough that users with screen readers can understand them without seeing the image or graphic. See Accessibility in audio-visual content for more details.

Appropriate caption Inappropriate caption

A view of Pike Place Market at daytime.

A view of Pike Place Market. It is daytime and the sun is shining.

Pike Place Market bustles with customers, vendors, and buskers all throughout the afternoon.

Customers, vendors, and buskers. Pike Place Market.

If you are embedding an image within web content, center-align the attribution with the image. Ensure you also attribute visual content to the original creator(s) properly, following the guidelines set out in Proper attributions for media.

Proper attributions for media

Whether you include stock media or original media in your content, you must properly attribute it according to the guidelines below.

Provide an attribution for stock media in the following format:

  • Individual creator: (Content type courtesy of creator’s full name via source)

  • Studio: (Content type courtesy of studio name)

Ensure any stock media you use represents the diversity of the target audience. For more information on inclusivity in visual content, refer to Inclusive imagery.

For original media (those created by people directly affiliated with Paraqlet), provide an attribution in the following format:

(Original content type courtesy of creator’s full name)

Include parentheses for attributions. Do not include a period at the end of the attribution. For a piece of media created by multiple people, list the creators' names in alphabetical order by last name.

(Original video courtesy of Victoria Cuervo, Sylvain Labonté, and Kieran Roseingrave)

If you write a caption for a graphic or image, include the appropriate attribution at the end of the caption, formatted as its own sentence. Do not include a period at the end of the attribution.

  • A view of the Space Needle at night. (Photograph courtesy of Rebecca Landau via Unsplash)

  • A vector graphic of a man in a gray sweater holding a brown tabby cat. (Graphic courtesy of Sylvain Studios)

  • Two small business-owners meet with Paraqlet’s founder, Maame A. A. Owusu, outside their shop. (Original photograph courtesy of Victoria Cuervo)

Attributions in social media posts

For social media posts, separate the body text of the post from the attributions with a blank line for readability. If you have multiple slides in your post, place the attributions in an ordered list with the heading Attributions followed by a blank line. Include a label with "Slide(s)" and the corresponding slide number(s), followed by a colon, for each attribution.

Attributions:

Slide 1: Original video courtesy of Kieran Roseingrave
Slide 2: Original graphic courtesy of Victoria Cuervo, Sylvain Labonté, and Kieran Roseingrave

If several of the same slides include content by the same creator, include only one attribution. Within the ordered list, position this attribution in accordance with the earliest occurence of the corresponding media (e.g. for media by the same creator on slides 3 and 6, the attribution should be the third one in the list).

Attributions:

Slide 1: Photograph courtesy of Rebecca Landau via Unsplash
Slides 2, 3, 5: Original photographs courtesy of Victoria Cuervo
Slide 4: Photograph courtesy of Rebecca Landau via Unsplash
Slide 6: Graphic courtesy of Sylvain Studios

For more information on ordered lists, see Ordered lists.

If you mention the creator on a social media post, use parentheses to offset the tag. Place the mention tag after the creator’s name.

Original photograph courtesy of Victoria Cuervo (@VictoriaCuervoPhotography), Sylvain Labonté (@sylvain_studios), and Kieran Roseingrave (@RosesInTheGrave)

If you are working with a platform that formats mentions as the mentioned person’s name instead of as their username (e.g. LinkedIn), do not type the creator’s name in addition to mentioning them.

Citations

For web content, use hyperlinks to cite online sources, such as a news article in a blog post. See Descriptive writing for more details on properly formatting hyperlinks.

For social media content, use square brackets to denote citations. At the bottom of the post, include a section titled Citations and list the square brackets in an ordered list with hyperlinks to sources. Separate the Citations title from the citations themselves with a blank line.

Citations:

[1] First link
[2] Second link
[3] Third link
[4] Fourth link

Each listed citation must correspond to an inline citation. Write the square brackets before any punctuation in a sentence to make it clear what information is being cited.

If you include information corroborated by multiple sources, list the citation numbers in a comma-separated list. List out the individual citations in their order of appearance in the citations list at the bottom of your post.

  • Inline citation: Beyond Extraordinary is opening a franchise in Spokane, WA in the spring of next year [1].

  • Inline citation with multiple corroborating sources: Beyond Extraordinary is opening a franchise in Spokane, WA in the spring of next year [1, 2, 4].

Include the citations list below the list of attributions if you have both. For information on attributing media to the original creators, see Proper attributions for media.

Acronyms

When using acronyms in your writing, only use those your audience is familiar with. Refer to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for spellings of common acronyms. Capitalize all the letters of an acronym.

Do not include periods in between the letters of an acronym (e.g. abbreviate United States as US, not as U.S.).

  • NASA

  • UNESCO

  • UK

  • CD-ROM

Spell out an acronym upon its first use and include the acronym in parentheses following the spelled-out term. Write all the words in the spelled-out form in lowercase letters unless they are proper nouns.

In psychological research, study populations skew towards people who are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD).

If an acronym will only appear once in your content, do not use it. Just spell out the term.

Plural form of acronyms

If an acronym represents a singular noun, add a lowercase s to the end to make it plural. Do not add an apostrophe before the s.

CEO → CEOs

Indefinite articles and acronyms

When using an indefinite article with an acronym, whether you use a or an depends on how the acronym is pronounced in Standard American English pronunciation. If the acronym starts with a vowel sound (a, e, i, o, u), use an. If it starts with a consonant sound, use a.

  • A URL

  • A CEO

  • A YAML file

  • An MRI

  • An EMT

Abbreviations

Use abbreviations your audience is familiar with. Refer to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for spellings of common abbreviations.

Honorifics

When writing about a person who uses an honorific tied to a certain academic or professional status, such as Dr., Gov., and Sen., use the honorific consistently throughout your piece. Place a period after the honorific.

When introducing the person, use their full name with the honorific. Then, use the honorific with just their surname.

Dr. Estari Kokkonen, Communications Manager at Paraqlet, suggests organizations stay attuned to inclusive communications strategies.

"In this day and age, it’s more important than ever to ensure your company leverages social listening and develops best practices for inclusive communication so your communications resonate with your target audience," says Dr. Kokkonen.

Dr. Kokkonen notes that inclusive communication includes ensuring your company’s communication channels—from social media to website and beyond—follow WCAG or Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

If multiple people in your content share the same surname (regardless of their titles), use their full names consistently throughout to avoid confusion. When applicable, only use their academic or professional honorific when introducing them.

Dr. Estari Kokkonen, Communications Manager at Paraqlet, suggests organizations stay attuned to inclusive communications strategies.

Elina Kokkonen, Director of Marketing at Paraqlet, agrees.

"Social listening, consulting on inclusive communication strategies and internal trainings, best practices for inclusivity in your company’s brand style guide—there’s really no reason your company shouldn’t be crafting every communication with inclusivity in mind," says Elina Kokkonen.

Dr. Ilya Kokkonen, Chief Human Resources Officer at Paraqlet, adds that inclusivity is more than just a buzzword—for culturally conscious, modern companies, it’s a way of working.

"Inclusivity should be baked into the company culture from the start. Diverse perspectives having a seat at the table is a great way to ensure your decisions are well-informed," says Ilya Kokkonen, "but commitment to inclusivity goes beyond hiring strategy. It extends to how you show up for your employees and your clients, and how you create and foster a safe environment every day."

Likewise, Estari Kokkonen notes that inclusive communication includes ensuring your company’s communication channels—from social media to website and beyond—follow WCAG or Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

In the example above, all the quoted individuals share the same surname, and two of them share the same professional honorific. You would refer to all these individuals by their full names, with proper titles, upon introducing them. Then, use their full names going forward.

You do not need to use courtesy honorifics such as Mr., Ms., and Mx., which are not associated with a certain academic or professional status.

Suffixes

Learn about how to properly denote academic degrees and generational lineage from the guidelines below.

Post-nominal letters

Post-nominal letters indicate a person has been awarded a certain honor, office, or academic or professional designation. Do not include periods as part of post-nominal letters. Add a comma between the person’s name and their post-nominal letters, as well as between multiple different post-nominal letters. When including the post-nominal letters in an introductory sentence, offset them with a pair of commas.

Estari Kokkonen, PhD, earned her doctorate at the University of Washington, Seattle.

For people using the title of Dr., use either the title or the post-nominal letters (e.g. PhD, MD) in reference to them, but not both.

If a person uses multiple post-nominal letters, list them in descending order of precedence. For multiple sets of post-nominal letters, list them in the following order:

  1. Civil honors

  2. Military honors

  3. Appointments

  4. Academic degrees

  5. Membership in academic or professional bodies

Generational suffixes

As with honorifics, add a period after English generational suffixes like Jr. and Sr., used to distinguish members of a family who share the same name. Do not add a comma between the person’s name and their generational suffix.

William Pleasant Jr.

For numerical generational suffixes like II, III, and IV, write Roman numerals after the person’s name. Do not add a period after a numerical generational suffix.

Johann Strauss II