I have been keeping a record of how to spell the names of companies related to digital technology, and how to spell actions like 'log in to'. Without further ado, here is The Privacy Dad's style guide to date:
Capitalisation in titles
Nouns (table, woman, book)
Pronouns (you, my, hers)
Adjectives (amazing, lovely, wet)
Adverbs (slowly, often, fortunately)
Verbs (be, stop, wander)
No caps in titles
Determiners (a, an, the)
Prepositions with four letters or fewer (in, on, out)
Coordinating conjunctions (so, but, yet, and, or)
https://www.elevenwriting.com/blog/is-your-capitalized-in-a-title
What about an article ('the') after a colon in the title?
Dash
Use 'emdash' —
I now use a range of browsers daily—Firefox, Brave, Chrome and Microsoft Edge—and use each for specific logins and accounts.
Numbers
A simple rule for using numbers in writing is that small numbers ranging from one to ten (or one to nine, depending on the style guide) should generally be spelled out. Larger numbers (i.e., above ten) are written as numerals.
Here is a rule that you can truly rely on: always spell out numbers when they begin a sentence, no matter how large or small they may be.
Source: scribendi.com
Company and product names
Compounded: | But: | Separate words: | Weird: | |
---|---|---|---|---|
MacBook | Evernote | Bear Blog | Gmail | |
LastPass | Dropbox | Privacy Guides | pCloud | |
ThinkPad | Microsoft | The New Oil | e Foundation | |
GitHub | Opt Out | /e/OS | ||
LibreOffice | Internet | Google Drive | de-Google (or DeGoogle) | |
KeePass | Techlore | Google Docs | F-Droid | |
DuckDuckGo | Mullvad | Google Play | GIFs | |
AuroraStore | Firefox | App Store? | Wi-Fi1 | |
Murena | Standard Notes | macOS | ||
YouTube | Fairphone | Xbox Game Pass | eBook2 | |
FromSoftware | Bluetooth | Cake Wallet | Odysee | |
Nextcloud | Markdown | Monero Talk | ||
MoneroTopia | Pixelfed | |||
Xfce | ||||
Protopage |
Spelling consistency
mouse pad
smartphone
dumbphone
feature phone
email (not e-mail)
second-hand (not secondhand)
pre-installed
use 'plugin' (though 'plug-in' is in dictionaries)
help desk
to-do list
first-hand (adj, adv) not firsthand (US)
sci-fi
gameplay
hard disk
hotspot
log in to your account
log on to a website
your login details/your login
Punctuation
(This is a complete sentence.)
This is a sentence (with an afterthought).
Both single or double quotation marks are fine. Be consistent. I try to use 'single' for items and "double" for quoted speech.
When quoting items in a list, punctuation goes outside quotation marks:
Words like 'server', 'butt', and 'glasses' all appear in the list. link
When quoting direct speech, punctuation goes inside quotation marks.
"Hello!" said Bob.
"Hello," said Bob.
Bob said, "Hello."
Footnotes
come at the end of sentence, after the full stop.3
Problems
The advice is contradictory. Take a look online, for example, at whether to spell 'log in to' or 'log into'. The main thing is consistency; hence this running document.
Documentation
Not e-mail https://www.grammarly.com/blog/spelling-e-mail-email/
To-do list https://grammarhow.com/todo-list-to-do-list-or-to-do-list/
-----Discuss on Reddit-----
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But see this: https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/61649-how-do-you-spell-wifi-wi-fi/↩
Discussion: https://www.dailywritingtips.com/ebook-ebook-ebook-or-e-book/↩
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