Low End Mac Style Guide

Revised 2007.08.07

A style guide is where you turn when you're not sure how to spell, capitalize, or punctuate a word or name. This is presented as a public service to Mac webmasters, who should feel free to contribute additions and suggest changes (email link below).

We do try to avoid use of all caps company names, such as NVIDIA, unless it's an abbreviation, such as ATI. "...generally we'll go with the company preference, unless it's really bizarre."

The following are adapted from Engadget's style guide:

1. Intercapped product and company names should generally be treated as the company treats them unless it's egregious and/or looks weird. Example: iPhone stays iPhone, BlackBerry stays BlackBerry, and TiVo stays TiVo, but ASUSTeK becomes Asustek. This rule is subject to many exceptions based on usage and history, and also functions as the "this is stupid" loophole.
2. Product and company names that are regular English words will be treated like proper English nouns, complete with proper capitalization. Example: DROID becomes Droid and nook becomes Nook. In cases such as iPod touch, iPod nano, Mac mini, etc., usage should follow company convention when the two words are used together, but when only the second word is used to identify the product, it should be capitalized (e.g., Touch, Nano, Mini, etc.) to avoid potential confusion. Also, the informal (and incorrect) iTouch is allowed as shorthand for the iPod touch.
3. Product and company names that are not regular English words will be capitalized first as proper nouns, and then as the company treats them. Example: RAZR stays RAZR, but chumby would become Chumby.
4. Acronyms should obviously be in all-caps.

Style, Product Names

• Apple TV, always include a space. We don't use TV.
• AltiVec, Freestyle's trademarked brand name for the "velocity engine" in G4 CPUs.
• CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM, always include the hyphen.
• Combo drive, always capitalize Combo, even though it's not a trademark or brand name, as we treat is as the proper name for a certain type of optical drive: CD-RW/DVD-ROM. Never run together as a single word.
• Core 2, no space between Core and 2. Space between Core 2 and Duo or Solo.
• disc, proper for compact disc, DVD disc, but not hard disk or floppy disk.
• disk, preferred over disc for floppy disk and hard disk, but CD should be compact disc. We prefer "hard drive" to "hard disk".
• DIMM, DIMMs, a type of memory module. Note the lower case "s" at the end of the plural.
• eMac, the 17" CRT version of the old CRT iMac
• email is displacing e-mail, which displaced E-mail.
• FireWire, Apple's brand name for IEEE-1394
• Freescale, formerly Motorola's semiconductor division. The "S" is not capitalized.
• GB (gigabytes), both letters capitalized, used with leading space (e.g., 4 GB)
• GHz, gigahertz. Never Ghz, gHz, or ghz. Used with a leading space (1.8 GHz). Hertz is a proper noun.
• gig or gigs, short for gigabytes, discouraged
• Hertz, Hz with leading space (e.g. 60 Hz)
• hard drive, sometimes abbreviated HD or HDD, although we discourage that. At Low End Mac, the rule is to spell it out whenever possible. Exception: discussing a computer with a list of specs, such as Power Mac 7500/132, 32 MB RAM, 1.2 GB HD, etc.
• iBook, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iTunes, iMovie, etc. the first letter is never capitalized. Some publications have tried - it looks ugly.
• iCEO, former title for Steve Jobs.
• i.Link, Sony's brand name for its implementation of the IEEE-1394 (FireWire) standard, often seen as iLink or i.LINK.
• iPod mini, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod touch, Apple's official spelling with first letter of second word in lowercase.
• kilobits, Kb or kb
• kilobytes, KB with a leading space, sometimes K without a leading space as in 400K and 800K floppies
• KHz, kilohertz. Never kHz, khz, or Khz. Used with a leading space (100 KHz). Hertz is a proper noun.
• MacBook, the "B" is always capitalized
• Mac Pro, two separate words, never run together
• Mac mini, lowercase "m" always used for Mac mini.
• maxed, as in "maxed out", and maxing, as in "maxing RAM". Sometimes seen with double-x, but over 90% of Web content spells it with one X. So do we.
• Mb (megabits), the M is always capitalized, the b lower-case to represent bits (vs. bytes), should have a leading space.
• MB (megabytes), both letters capitalized, since upper-case B represents bytes (vs. bits), used with leading space (e.g. 64 MB)
• MHz, megahertz. Never mhz, Mhz, or mHz. Used with a leading space (400 MHz). Hertz is a proper noun.
• meg or megs, short for megabytes, discouraged
• Microsoft, never MicroSoft, and it hasn't been Micro-Soft since the 1970s. Please avoid Micro$oft unless you need to use it to make a point.
• ns, nanosecond, a billionth of a second, generally used when measuring memory speed.
• nVidia, graphics card maker, competitor of ATI. The company nowadays prefers all caps, but we're sticking with the older usage, as we don't like all caps.
• PowerBook, one word, P and B always capitalized
• Power Mac, Power Macintosh, two words
• PowerMacs, only appropriate when used to refer to the PowerMacs email list, otherwise use Power Macs.
• PowerPC, PPC, family of processors made by IBM and Freescale (formerly Motorola), not a synonym for Power Mac.
• Radeon, ATI's trademarked name for its graphics processor family. We do not print it in all caps - never as RADEON.
• RAM, Random Access Memory. Except when listing product specs, Low End Mac prefers to talk about memory or computer memory.
• SIMM, SIMMs, a type of memory module. Note the lower case "s" at the end of the plural.
• SuperDrive, single word, the "S" and "D" are always capitalized. An Apple trademark, although we also use it generically to refer to DVD burners.
• Velocity Engine, Apple's trademark name for AltiVec.
• VMX, IBM's trademark for AltiVec.
• Voodoo2, Voodoo3, etc., no space, and the D is not capitalized (not VooDoo)
• Web, a proper noun (there is only one World Wide Web), so it should always be capitalized when used to refer to the whole Web. Also capitalized when used with an adjective, such as Mac Web.
• web, adjective, as in web server, not capitalized
• webmaster, single word, not capitalized
• web page, two words, just doesn't look right run together or hyphenated.
• website has replace "web site" in our usage
• Xserve, Apple's slim server

Site Names, URLs

These are taken from current usage on these sites and are the way I prefer to use them at Low End Mac. Most are presented without comment. Many are arbitrary choices among several ways the site name is used within the site.

• 3dfx <http://www.3dfx.com/>, no longer in business
• AppleInsider <http://www.appleinsider.com/>
• Applelinks <http://www.applelinks.com/>
• Accelerate Your Mac <http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/>, the exclamation point is no longer part of the site name, which is a registered trademark
• ars technica <http://www.arstechnica.com/>
• c|net <http://www.cnet.com/>, as used in their logo, uses vertical bar between C and N. Many sites use Cnet or CNET.
• dealmac <http://dealmac.com/>, they have removed the hypen from their name
• Deals on the Web <http://www.dealsontheweb.com/>
• E-Media Tidbits <http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31>
• Educators' News <http://www.mathdittos2.com/ednews/>, plural and possessive
• iGeek <http://www.igeek.com/>
• iMac Channel <http://lowendmac.com/imac/>
• iMac NewsPage <http://advergence.com/newspage/>
• ixMicro <http://www.ixmicro.com/>, "I" never capitalized, "M" always capitalized. The company finally settled on IXMICRO (all caps), but this is ugly, so we're sticking with the old form, out of business
• Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/>, three words, no hyphens (not Low-End Mac or LowEndMac)
• Mac3dfx.com <http://www.mac3dfx.com/>
• Mac Addict, two words
• MacCentral <http://maccentral.macworld.com/>
• MacEdition <http://www.macedition.com/>
• MacFixIt <http://www.macfixit.com/>
• MacInTouch <http://www.macintouch.com/>
• MacMinute <http://www.macminute.com/>
• Mac Net Journal <http://www.whiterabbits.com/MacNetJournal/>
• MacNN <http://www.macnn.com/>
• Mac Observer <http://www.macobserver.com/>
• Mac OS Rumors <http://macosrumors.com/> -- although the logo looks like MacOS Rumors, whenever they spell it out, it's Mac OS Rumors
• Macs Only! <http://www.macsonly.com/>, space between words, exclamation point should be present
• Mac Opinion <http://www.macopinion.com/>
• MacSlash <http://www.macslash.org/>, capital S
• MacSurfer, MacSurfer's Headline News <http://www.macsurfer.com/>, I prefer the shorter name
• Macworld <http://www.macworld.com/>, the "w" has never been and should never be capitalized
• MOSR (Mac OS Rumors) <http://macosrumors.com/>
• mrbarrett.com <http://mrbarrett.com/>
• MyAppleMenu <http://www.myapplemenu.com/>, one word, not three
• O'Grady's PowerPage <http://www.powerpage.org/>
• OSNews <http://www.osnews.com/>
• osOpinion <http://www.osopinion.com/>
• Railhead Design <http://www.railheaddesign.com/>
• RandomMaccess <http://www.randommaccess.com/>
• Slashdot <http://slashdot.org/>
• The Register <http://theregister.co.uk/>, the article is part of the name
• Think Secret <http://www.thinksecret.com/>
• TidBITS <http://tidbits.com/>, note capitalization

Please send additions, corrections to Dan Knight .

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