Formatting

Lists

All list items should be formatted the same way.


Bold

Bold text only to emphasize specific words or phrases or links as UI elements. Focus on bolding the core action, item or destination instead of the whole phrase.


Italics

In general, avoid using italics for emphasis. Instead, rewrite your sentence to provide emphasis. For example, place important words or phrases at the beginning or end of a sentence instead of in the middle, or break long sentences into several shorter sentences.

It's a fairly well known accessibility issue that italic fonts should be avoided as they reduce readability for those with sight issues and dyslexia.


URLs and email addresses

Leave off the "http://", "https://" and "www.", and put the rest of the URL in lowercase. Put email addresses in all lowercase.


Phone numbers

  • Use hyphens (-) to separate phone numbers.

  • Don't use brackets or parentheses.

  • Don't add the "+" symbol before country codes


Percentages

Use the % symbol instead of writing out the word percent or percentage


Time

  • Use uppercase AM and PM with a space after the number.

  • Don’t punctuate.

  • To separate the times in a range, use an en dash ( – ) with no spaces before and after.

  • If the range is contained fully in the AM or PM, include AM or PM at the end of the range only.

  • The style of times in the range don’t need to match. Don’t use a colon for times that are on the hour even if the other time in the range requires a colon.


Contractions

We like contractions. They help us stay succinct and sound more natural when communicating with our community.


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