Canonical Documentation Style Guide

This is an as yet incomplete guide to the language and style conventions used for Canonical documentation projects. Topics are listed in the navigation to the left, and presented here as a single page to aid searching.

Spelling

Canonical is a UK based company, and uses British English throughout. There are many small differences between that and US English, but for the most part it comes down to spelling.

Some common differences are:

In the most part this can be mitigated by simply enabling spell checking on your editing software and choosing an en-gb dictionary. The minor differences in grammar will (hopefully) be picked up in review by the documentation team.

Other common terms

We would like to standardise on the following spellings for common technology terms:

• email
• online
• setup (noun), set up (verb)
• backup (noun), back up (verb)
• login (noun), log in (verb)
• web
• website
• internet
• systems management
• virtualisation
• space-separated, comma-delimited
• load balancer (only upper case as part of proper name e.g. Elastic Load Balancer)

Contractions

Contractions are very common in spoken English and in many types of writing. Avoiding the use of them entirely makes it difficult to achieve a friendly, conversational tone. However, we should keep to contractions that are commonly understood and not part of some regional dialect, and only use them in "conversational" parts of the documentation (i.e. explanatory text).

Contractions you can use

Don't use these!

Headings and capitalisation

All headings and headlines should be sentence case. This means that you should only capitalise the first word.

Use: Ubuntu reaches new heights Don't use: Ubuntu Reaches New Heights

You should only capitalise:

• product names
• personal names
• company names
• brands
• places
• Ubuntu Server, not Ubuntu server

If it is not the actual product name, it should not be capitalised. Never capitalise keywords, technical terms and jargon.

Dates

For consistency, we will use the following date format:

• Single day: 1 January 2013
• Date range within same month: 1-2 January 2013
• Date range across two or more months: 1 January - 2 February 2013

Numbers

Numbers in single figures should be spelled out in most cases. From 10 onwards, numbers should be written in digits.

Exceptions to this rule include numbered lists and units of measurement.

When writing out numbers over the 100s, remember to include commas.

Use: 7,000

Don't use: 7000

Code examples in documentation

DO NOT use prompt marks (e.g. $ or #) in code samples. These cause problems for users who sometimes mistakenly type them in, or who want to copy and paste sections of code. They also encourage poor explanation of the code.

DO NOT use comments in normal bash code. E.g.:

juju deploy wordpress 
juju deploy ntp-master --to 2   #colocates with wordpress
juju add-relation mysql wordpress

This may be a useful comment if you just have a bash script to communicate information, but we have words! It is clearer, more obvious and more helpful to simply explain, before after or during the code.

DO NOT use long blocks of code. Anything which doesn't comfortably fit on a screen is too long. Consider why you are showing it. Can it be broken up into parts? Long sections of code are rarely read in documentation. If the code is an example intended to be used rather than read, offer it as a download instead.

DO separate commands and output where appropriate. For example, instead of:

juju status
environment: gce3
machines:
  "0":
    agent-state: started
    agent-version: 1.24.2
    dns-name: 104.197.44.114
...
...

It is more informative to break between the command and the output with explanation. This doesn't even have to be long. It breaks up the code blocks somewhat and makes the whole document more legible and less likely to cause unintended naps. For example

To check what is going on, run:


      juju status

... which should return some formatted information giving the current
state of each unit and service:

       environment: gce3
       machines:
        "0":
          agent-state: started
          agent-version: 1.24.2
...
...

Images

An image should not be overly cropped - allow for context.

DO NOT LINK IMAGES FROM A GOOGLE DRIVE This will work, until such a time as whoever owns the image closes their account (or leaves Canonical).

Words and phrases to avoid

Try to avoid jargon, long-winded phrases and words with negative connotations. Steer clear of the following:

• Allow - This suggests that we are in a position of power, permitting users or customers to conduct certain activities.
• The ability to – Use 'We can' instead of 'We have the ability to'
• Is able to – Use 'Ubuntu can' instead of 'Ubuntu is able to'
• Not only...but also...
• Eliminate
• Execute
• Terminate
• Kill
• Disruptive
• Explosive
• Leverage
• Ecosystem
• Going forward
• In order to
• Form factor
• Use case
• End user – Use 'user' instead
• Linux for human beings

It can be tempting to use flowery, official-sounding words rather than plain English. Try to keep it simple.

FAQs

There are some grammatical issues that can cause confusion. Here are some of the main offenders.

What is the difference between fewer and less?

Fewer means “not as many,” less means “not as much.”

A commonly-quoted example used to highlight the distinction is: “There are fewer cars on the road, which means there is less traffic.”

Also compare: “The fewer people know about this the better” and “The less people know about this the better”.

Note: The rule does not work if the number is counted as a quantity or as a unit. For example: “She paid less than ten pounds for it” or “His last jump was less than fifteen feet”.

What is the difference between that and which?

This can, and has, caused many arguments, so it's probably best not to get too worried about it. A useful guide is: that defines, which informs.

This is not a cast-iron rule but it can help: “This is the house that Jack built, but I think the one next door, which Jack also built, is more attractive.”

“Which” is often clausal, so is predominantly preceded by a comma - compare “The police stopped the second car that was driven by a woman.” and “The police stopped the second car, which was driven by a woman.”

Is it OK to split an infinitive?

There is no grammatical rule that says you can't split an infinitive. Sometimes, it is definitely better to split:

"Can dot.com companies ever hope to fully recover their share values?"

This sounds much better than moving “fully” in front of “to recover” or behind it. The key is not to write anything that is ambiguous or inelegant.