WordPress Documentation Style Guide

The WordPress Documentation Style Guide is one of Google Season of Docs' projects for 2020.

• Technical writer: Atharva Dhekne (@tacitonic)
• Mentors: Felipe Elia (@felipeelia) and Milana Cap (@zzap)

Quick links:

• WordPress Documentation Style Guide
• Google Season of Docs original project proposal for tacitonic (Atharva Dhekne) – Google Developers
• WordPress Documentation Style Guide – Google Season of Docs 2020 Project Report

Proposed elements/components in the style guide

Status	Description
🔄	In progress
✔️	Completed
❌	Discarded
⚠️	Needs changes

Style guide introduction (New section) ✔️

Component	Status
WordPress style guide	✔️
Style guide highlights	✔️
Other resources	✔️
Changelog	✔️

Document guidelines ✔️

Component	Status
Accessibility	✔️
Document structure	✔️
Changes to the guide (New component)	✔️
Encoding	✔️
External sources	✔️
Facts	✔️
Fonts	✔️ (Moved to Formatting)
Global audience	✔️
Inclusivity	✔️
Legality, licensing, trademarks	✔️ (Moved to Formatting)
Multi-platform accessibility	✔️
Non-ambiguous, no excessive claims	✔️
Page layout	✔️
Political correctness	✔️
Protocols	✔️
Security	✔️
Sentence structure	✔️
Succinct writing	✔️
Tone and style	✔️
Unbiased	✔️

Language and grammar ✔️

Component	Status
Abbreviations and acronyms	✔️
Affirmation and negation	❌
Articles	✔️
Capitalization	✔️
Clause	✔️
Contractions (New component)	✔️
Direct/indirect speech	✔️
Genders	✔️ (Moved to Pronouns)
Glossary	(Moved to Word Usage Dictionary)
Grammatical person	✔️
Nouns	✔️
Plurals (New component)	✔️
Possessives (New component)	✔️
Prefixes and suffixes	✔️
Prepositions	✔️
Pronouns	✔️
Referencing	✔️ (Moved to Formatting)
Slang and jargon	✔️ (Moved to Word Choice)
Spellings	✔️ (Moved to Word Choice)
Technical terms	✔️ (Moved to Word Choice)
Tense	✔️
Verbs	✔️
Voice	✔️
Word choice (New component)	✔️

Punctuation ✔️

Component	Status
Apostrophes	✔️
Colons	✔️
Commas	✔️
Dashes (split from Hyphens)	✔️
Ellipses	✔️
Exclamation points	✔️
Hyphens	✔️
Parentheses	✔️
Periods	✔️
Question marks	✔️
Quotation marks (split from Apostrophes)	✔️
Semicolons (split from Colons)	✔️
Slashes	✔️

Formatting ✔️

Component	Status
Abstracts, introduction, prefaces	❌
Brand names, product names	✔️
Captions	✔️ (Moved to Media)
Code snippets, code blocks	✔️ (Moved to Code)
Currencies	✔️ (Moved to Numbers)
Date and time, time zones, places	✔️
Examples and scenarios (New component)	✔️
Filenames	✔️
Footnotes	✔️
Headings and titles	✔️
Highlighting (Bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, quotation)	✔️ (Moved to Text formatting)
Indentation	❌
Index	❌
Key terms (New component)	✔️
Links and URLs	✔️ (Moved to Linking)
Lists, bullet points, numbering	✔️
Media (Images, videos) and illustrations	✔️
Notices (Notes, warnings, tips)	✔️
Numbers	✔️
Obsolete content (New component)	✔️
Phone numbers	✔️
Polyglots, translation, language scripts	✔️
Referencing	✔️ (Moved to Linking)
Spacing	✔️ (Moved to Text formatting)
Tables	✔️
Text formatting	✔️
Trademarks, copyrights, patents, citations	✔️
Tutorials and procedures	✔️
Typography and fonts	✔️ (Moved to Text formatting)
UI elements	✔️ (Moved to User interface)
Units of measurement	✔️
Words as words (New component)	✔️

Linking (New section) ✔️

Component	Status
Cross-references	✔️
External links	✔️
Heading links	✔️
Image links	✔️
Link text	✔️

User interface (Moved to Developer content) ✔️

Component	Status
Activities	✔️
Buttons	✔️
Code snippets, code blocks	✔️
Command line interface	✔️
Dialogs	✔️
Menus and dropdowns	✔️
Pop-ups and alerts	✔️
Tabs	✔️
Terminology	✔️
UI elements	✔️
Windows	✔️

Developer content ✔️

Component	Status
Code in text (New component)	✔️
Code examples	✔️
Coding standards (New component)	✔️
Command-line syntax	✔️
CSS	✔️ (Moved to Coding standards)
HTML	✔️ (Moved to Coding standards)
JS	✔️ (Moved to Coding standards)
Markdown	✔️ (Moved to Coding standards)
MySQL	❌
PHP	✔️ (Moved to Coding standards)
Placeholder formatting (New component)	✔️
Syntax	✔️
Terminology	✔️
UI elements	✔️
XML	❌

Word list and usage dictionary ✔️

Component	Status
Numbers	✔️
Symbols	✔️
A	✔️
B	✔️
C	✔️
D	✔️
E	✔️
F	✔️
G	✔️
H	✔️
I	✔️
J	✔️
K	✔️
L	✔️
M	✔️
N	✔️
O	✔️
P	✔️
Q	✔️
R	✔️
S	✔️
T	✔️
U	✔️
V	✔️
W	✔️
X	✔️
Y	✔️
Z	✔️

Future components

Component	Status
Media > Videos
API reference documentation