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Grammar and mechanics

Capitalisation​

  • Capitalise proper nouns: names of people, places, and organisations. Capitalise also geographic terms such as countries and cities, and historic episodes and events.
  • Use sentence case for all headlines and headings.
  • Don't use ALLCAPS unless you're writing an acronym.
  • For email addresses and website URLs, use all lowercase.

Punctuation​

Apostrophes​

  • To make a possessive from a noun that ends in -s, use only an apostrophe (no s).

Example: Matias' Moodle site runs on 4.3.

  • Pluralise acronyms by adding -s.

Example: These URLs are secure.

Ampersands​

  • Don't use an ampersand (&) or a plus sign (+) to mean 'and', unless it's used in a brand name.

Contractions​

  • Use contractions for common phrases, such as 'don't' or 'can't'.

Example: These passwords don't match. Example: Students can't see who marked their work.

Commas​

  • When writing lists, always use the Oxford comma.

Example: This includes user ID, role, and course ID.

Dashes and hyphens​

  • Use an em dash (—) with spaces before and after to offset an aside, and use an en dash (–) to connect a range of numbers or dates.

Example: The newest version of Moodle LMS —released last month— has had 200,000 downloads. There will be 200-250 attendees.

Exclamation marks​

  • Save exclamation marks for key moments in the user journey.
  • Don't use more than one exclamation mark.

Percentages​

  • With numbers, use '%' instead of the word 'percent'.

Example: You've completed 89% of the course.

Periods​

  • Don't user periods in country acronyms.

Example: Their headquarters are located in New York, USA.

Dates, numbers and currencies​

Dates, months, and years​

  • For short dates, use DD/MM/YYYY without any leading zeros.

Example: 21/12/1975 or 21/3/2020

  • For long dates, use DD Month YYYY without any leading zeros.

Example: 21 December 1975

  • If you include the day of the week in a date, add a comma after the day.

Example: Friday, December 21

  • For days of the week, use the following abbreviations: Mon, Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun.

Time and time zones​

  • Write 'am' and 'pm' always in lowercase, with no space before them and with no periods between the letters.

Example: 2:00pm, not 2:00 pm

  • For times on the hour, include minutes.

Example: 6:00pm, not 6pm

Numbers, fractions, and units​

  • Spell out numbers if they're the first word in a sentence.

Example: Three days left to get early bird tickets.

  • To separate thousands and millions, use commas.
  • To indicate decimal points, use periods.

Example: 1,000 (one thousand); 3.14 (three point one four)

  • Always use a country code with phone numbers.

  • For units of measure, use lowercase letters and don't leave a space before the unit

Example: 121km, not 121 km.

  • When you write a decimal, include a leading zero before the decimal point.

Example: 0.75, not .75.

Currencies and money​

  • For currencies, put the symbol before the amount, with no space in between.

Example: €300, not 300€

  • Don't use periods in currency abbreviations.

Example: AUD, not A.U.D

  • Spell out thousand, million, billion, and trillion in full.

Example: 3 million users, not 3M users. Example 10 thousand resources, not 10K resources.

Emojis​

  • Emojis can make your writing more fun, but don't go overboard with them 😉.
  • Don't use negative emojis, such as 😡 😒 🤢 👹 ☠️