Style Guide

Follow these guidelines when writing materials for W3C WAI.

About this style guide

The purpose of the guide is to support readability, consistency, and easier translations.

This is a living document. Substantive changes will be listed in the changelog.

This style guide is for US English. Translators can use conventions in their language.

Get started

You can navigate the style guide:

• section by section, using the table of contents below
• as a single continuous page

Table of contents

• Structure and presentation
  • Structure
    • Logical flow and order
    • Using structural elements
  • Formatting
    • Bold
    • Italics
• Tone, language, and words
  • Tone
  • Language
    • Disability language
    • Gender-inclusive language
    • Plain language
  • Spelling
  • Terms
    • Correct usage of key terms
    • Terms to avoid
    • Context-dependent terms
    • W3C terms
• Style for different content types (A–Z)
  • Abbreviations
    • Expanding abbreviations
    • Re-expanding abbreviations
    • Capitalization in abbreviations
    • Abbreviations to avoid
  • Dates
  • Headings
    • Correct heading hierarchy
    • Capitalization in headings
    • Punctuation in headings
  • Links
    • Link text
    • In-line links
    • Links to non-HTML documents
    • Punctuation in links
  • Lists
    • Parallel structure
    • Long list items
    • Capitalization and punctuation in lists
    • Specifying list requirements (all items versus only one item)
  • Numbers
    • When to write as a digit
    • Digits versus words
    • Punctuation in numbers
  • Symbols
• Grammar
  • Approaches for related information in sentences
    • One sentence options
  • Capitalization
    • Abbreviations
    • All caps
    • Braille
    • Glossaries
    • Headings
    • Lists
    • Proper nouns
  • That versus which
  • Punctuation
    • Colons
    • Commas
    • Dashes and hyphens
    • Ellipsis
    • Headings
    • Links
    • Lists
    • Numbers
    • Parentheses
    • Quotation marks
    • Slashes