Abbreviations

• Spell out US state names when not used as contact information. When abbreviating, use standard two-letter postal abbreviations for states and Canadian provinces.
• US and UK are used for United States and United Kingdom in adjective form (US users, UK users).
• GmbH, NW are used without periods.
• Inc., Ltd., L.L.C., Ext, P.O. are used with periods.
• Most abbreviations are avoided (for example: Corporation, Suite, Street, Avenue).

Acronyms

• Use full phrase or full name of product or company in initial use (follow with acronym in parentheses). Spell out in all uses where there is possibility of confusion.

Dashes

• Put a space on either side of a long (em) dash.

Footnotes

• We do not use footnotes on our pages. Make an identifying reference to the source in the text, and create a separate list of references to accompany the article. References are placed in a list box using a standard bibliographic style.

Industry Terms

• Most language or information industry terms should be spelled out on first use.
• ASCII — Use all caps.
• Bidirectional — One word, not hyphenated, not capitalized mid-sentence.
• Big5 — Not Big Five, Big-5 or Big-five.
• CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) — We prefer "translation tool."
• CHT — Use all caps. Spell out "Chinese-Taiwan" the first time.
• CJK — Use all caps. Spell out "Chinese, Japanese and Korean" on first use.
• CP — Use all caps, as in CP 1258. Spell out "code page" the first time.
• DBCS — Use all caps. Spell out "double-byte character set" the first time.
• DOS — Use all caps.
• Double-byte — Hyphenate.
• DTP — Use all caps.
• Globalization — Define this term in relation to the topic; in software terms, it often refers to internationalization or the combination of internationalization and localization. Do not use the abbreviation g11n.
• Hangul — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Hanja — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Hanzi — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Hiragana — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• HTML — Use all caps.
• IME — Use all caps. Spell out "input method editor" first time.
• Internationalization — With a z, not "internationalisation." Do not use the abbreviation i18n.
• Internet — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Intranet — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• ISBN — Use all caps.
• ISO — Use all caps, as in "ISO 8859 encodings" and "ISO-8859-1."
• Kana — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Kanji — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Katakana — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Kotoeri — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Localization — With a z, not "localisation" except in proper names. Do not use the abbreviation l10n.
• Macintosh — Always spell out, not "Mac."
• Microsoft — Always spell out, not "MS."
• Multilingual — One word, no hyphens. (In the title of the magazine it has a capital L mid-word: MultiLingual.)
• Multi-user — Hyphenate.
• Operating system — Spell out; never "OS" except in proper nouns. Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• QA — Use all caps. Spell out "quality assurance" the first time.
• SGML — Use all caps.
• Roman alphabet — Capitalize. The term "Latin alphabet" is preferable.
• Romanize, Romanization — Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Shift-JIS — Always capitalize: Shift-JIS.
• Simplified Chinese — Always capitalize initial letters.
• Single-byte — Hyphenate.
• Traditional Chinese — Always capitalize initial letters.
• Unicode — Always capitalize.
• UNIX — Use all caps.
• United States — Spell out when used as a noun. Abbreviate as US when used as an adjective.
• Web — We do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• Website— One word. Do not capitalize mid-sentence.
• XML — Use all caps.

Italics

• Titles of books and magazines are italicized; titles of software are not.
• Words in languages other than English are italicized.
• Software commands, Java strings and Java classes are in italics.

Parentheses

• Avoid where possible. Use dash or create a separate sentence if you can.

Percent

• Use % symbol.

Punctuation

• Use commas as sparingly as possible.
• Commas in a series or list: do not use comma before "and" or "or" except to avoid confusion.
• Semicolons in a series or list: use semicolon before "and" or "or."
• Follow Associated Press style.

Spacing of Paragraphs

• Do not use tabs at the beginning of a new paragraph. Separate paragraphs by
  an extra line of spacing.

Spacing of Text

• Use one space between sentences.

Spellings

• Use US rather than British spellings (localization not localisation)

Typographic Conventions

• Use Courier font if available to indicate software code, HTML or XML tags, etc.
• Indicate Java classes, methods and so on, use italics.
• Unicode addresses and standards are put in capitals and full-size numbers.

Web Addresses

• Omit the http:// except where the remaining URL would not begin with www.