F5 Technical Writing Style Guide

Accessibility

• Alt text
• Color
• Link text

Error messages

• Error message strings
• Published error messages
• Writing error messages

Formatting

• Bold
• Capitalization
• Code blocks
• Dates and times
• Doc titles
• Headings
• Hyphens
• Italics
• Lists
• Numbers
• Tables

Grammar

• Articles
• Gerunds
• If vs. Whether
• May, Can, and Might
• Noun clusters
• Parallel structure
• Tense
• That vs. Which

Media

• Images
• Videos

Procedures

• Admonitions
• Cross-references
• Directional references
• Prerequisites
• Step formatting
• Step numbers in headings
• UI element names

Punctuation

• Colons
• Ellipses
• Em dash
• Oxford comma
• Possessives
• Quotation marks

Security

• Sensitive information

Terminology

• Acronyms
• Click vs. Select
• Configure vs. Set up
• Enable and disable
• Ensure vs. Make sure
• F5 product names
• Language and spelling
• Latin abbreviations
• Login vs. Log in
• UI terms
• Update vs. Upgrade
• Word list

Voice and tone

• Active voice
• Anthropomorphism
• Contractions
• Global audience
• Hedging
• Inclusive language
• Modern Voice
• Please and Thank You
• Reading level
• Second person
• Sentence length
• We and Our