Grammar

We use American-English. These are some common examples:

American-English	British-English
color	colour
favorite	favourite
dialog	dialogue
traveler	traveller
elevator	lift
zip code	postcode
license	licence

Acronyms and abbreviations

Use <abbr> tags to mark up abbreviations where appropriate.

Ampersands

Avoid the use of the ampersand except in article and page titles.

Capitalization

modmore should always be lowercase, even when using at the start of a sentence.

Blog post titles and page titles should use sentence case e.g.

? Competition: win a ticket to MODXpo 2015 and early access to our new big product

? Competition: Win a Ticket to MODXpo 2015 and Early Access to Our New Big Product

Product names should always be capitalized:

Commerce
Redactor
ContentBlocks
MoreGallery
SimpleCart
SimpleAB

As should licenses names:

Single License
Unlimited License
Development License

Colons

Use a colon to tell the reader that what follows is closely related to the preceding clause.

Commas

Use the Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma). This is the comma preceding the “and” before the last item in a list, for example:

Our premium extras are Redactor, ContentBlocks, MoreGallery, and SimpleAB.

Hyphens and dashes

Do not leave a space on either side of the em dash. Use the en dash for enumerated date ranges.

Hyphenate compound noun phrases used as adjectives unless the noun phrase is so popularly used that hyphenation appears awkward. Do not hyphenate compound adjectival phrases whose first element is an adverb.

Italics

Italicize to emphasize a word, cite an example, or indicate the title of a long work (books, movies, albums).

Numbers

Use comma for a thousands separator. The comma should have no space either side.

1,000

1,000,000

Use a full stop to denote cents or pence:

10.50

10.50

When using currently, add the correct currency sign with no space;

€10.50

€100,000

Semi-colon use

If two or more clauses grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction are to form a single compound sentence, the proper mark of punctuation is a semicolon.

It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark.

It is suggested that semi-colon use is rare, as a comma will suffice:

It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark.

Times

Use numerals and am or pm without a space. Don’t use minutes for on-the-hour time. E.g.

7am or 10:30pm

Use a hyphen between times to indicate a time period. E.g.

7am-10:30pm

Use UTC as the default time zone.

Blacklist

A list of words that should be avoided where possible:

• click here
• automagical
• awesome (because it’s not international)
• fluffy corporate terms like “solutions,” “incentivize,” “leverage” and “thought leader”
• anything related to politics
• anything related to religion
• swear words

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