Style guide

As in “Act of Parliament”. A piece of legislation that has achieved Royal Assent. Always capitalised; e.g. “the Act”.

When referring to a specific Act of Parliament, either use the full title (i.e. “Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021”) or the date of the Act (i.e. “the 2021 Act”)

Pluralise “AirPods”, not the series moniker. Do not use the definite article.

Examples: “AirPods Pro”, “AirPods Max”. Never “Airpods” or “Air Pods”.

Do not use as a label you apply to yourself. Never say “I am an ally”.

See “Ally” is a verb, not a noun.

To act in support of a marginalised group. Prefer the verb form, or “allying”, over the noun.

Examples: “I ally with LGBT+ people”, “do allying”.

A piece of legislation that is being scrutinised by Parliament. Always capitalised; e.g. “the Bill”.

Once a Bill has become an Act, refer to the Act at all times.

A website containing collection of blog posts.

A social network built on the AT Protocol. Always one word, with a capital “B” and a lowercase “s”. Never “BlueSky” or “bluesky”.

A single post on a blog.

Always include a space between ‘blog’ and ‘post’. Never ‘blogpost’. Never ‘blog’.

Use British spellings throughout prose and frontmatter: “organise”, “organisation”, “colour”, “favourite”, “realise”, “recognise”, “centre”, “licence” (noun), “license” (verb), etc.

US spellings are acceptable only inside code blocks or where a programming language requires them (for example, the CSS color property).

Never capitalise civil servant unless starting a sentence.

Capitalise when referring to the UK Civil Service.

The static site generator that powers this website. Always “Eleventy” in prose. “11ty” is acceptable in file paths, tags and configuration — not in prose.

One word. Never “e-mail”.

Italicise the formal title: Eurovision Song Contest.

The definite article is only acceptable when using the full name of the contest; e.g. “the Eurovision Song Contest”.

“Eurovision” alone is fine on subsequent references and does not need italics.

The federated social web. Always “the fediverse”, never “fediverse”.

Some people disagree with using “the”. Those people are wrong.

The annual series of blog posts in which I review each Eurovision Song Contest entry.

A series of games consoles by Nintendo. Whilst popular amongst online communities to omit the space between “Game” and “Boy”, Nintendo includes the space, and therefore so do I.

Examples: “Game Boy”, “Game Boy Color”, “Game Boy Advance”.

Cartridges used for Game Boy consoles. Whilst popular amongst online communities to omit the space between “Game” and “Pak”, Nintendo includes the space, and therefore so do I.

The annual end-of-year post reviewing my favourite games of the preceding twelve months. Always title case.

The Government Digital Service. Use the full name on first reference, “GDS” thereafter.

The code hosting platform. Always “GitHub”, with a capital “G” and “H”. Never “Github” or “github”.

Lowercase “github” is acceptable in URLs and frontmatter.

Preferred term for the personal targets I set myself at the start of each year. Never “resolution”.

Each goal must be specific and measurable.

Always rendered “GOV.UK”, with a full stop and both parts uppercase. Never “Gov.uk” or “gov.uk”, except where inside a URL.

Always one word, camel case. Pluralise “HomePod”, not the series moniker. Do not use the definite article.

Example: “HomePods mini”.

Always camel case: “IndieWeb”. Never “indieweb”, “Indieweb” or “indie web” in prose.

Lowercase “indieweb” is acceptable in frontmatter tags and URLs.

Pluralise “iPad”, not the series moniker. Alternatively add ”series”.

Do not use the definite article.

Examples: “iPads Pro”, “iPad Air series”.

Never capitalise “mini”.

Pluralise “iPhone”, not the series moniker. Alternatively add ”series”.

Do not use the definite article.

Examples: “iPhones 16”, ”iPhone 16 series”.

Pluralise “iPod”, not the series moniker. Alternatively add ”series”.

Do not use the definite article.

Examples: “iPods Classic”, ”iPod nano series”. Do not use the definite article.

Never capitalise “nano”.

Always “JavaScript”, with a capital “J” and “S”. Never “Javascript” or “javascript”.

Lowercase “javascript” is acceptable in code.

Preferred collective term for lesbian, gay, bi, and other minority sexual orientations, and trans and other gender identities. Always include the ‘+’. Don’t use other acronyms unless specifically necessary (for example, when quoting something else).

Swedish singer. The best Eurovision Song Contest winner. A one-name reference; no disambiguation needed.

Pluralise “MacBook”, not the series moniker. Alternatively add ”series”. Do not use the definite article.

Examples: “MacBooks Air”, ”MacBook Pro series”.

Never pluralise “Mac”; it sounds like “max”. Never capitalise “mini”. Never pluralise “mini”. Use “devices”. Do not use the definite article.

Example: “Mac mini devices”.

A federated social network. Always capitalised. Not a synonym for “the fediverse” — Mastodon is one implementation among many.

A Member of Parliament. Always uppercase. Pluralised as “MPs”.

The Nintendo Entertainment System. Always uppercase as an initialism. Italicise the full name where used.

Always “Node.js” in prose, with a capital “N” and a full stop before “js”. Never “Node”, “nodejs” or “NodeJS”.

Lowercase “nodejs” is acceptable in package names and configuration.

A page describing what I am currently focused on, after Derek Sivers. Lowercase “now page” in general prose; capitalise “Now” only when quoting the term itself (e.g. a “Now” page).

The Office for Digital Identities and Attributes. Note the capitalisation: capital “O”, lowercase “f”, capital “D”, “I” and “A”. Use the full name on first reference, “OfDIA” thereafter.

Capitalise when referring to the UK Parliament or either of its Houses (“House of Commons”, “House of Lords”).

“Parliamentary” is lowercase except at the start of a sentence.

Always one word, camel case. Abbreviated as “PS5”, “PS4”, etc. Do not pluralise the device or the moniker, and instead use “consoles”; e.g. “PlayStation 5 consoles” or “PS5 consoles”.

An IndieWeb acronym for “Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. Always uppercase. Use the full expansion on first reference.

Preferred term for a piece of digital content made available on a website or social media platform.

Do not use “tweet”, “toot” or “skeet”. “Xeet” is acceptable when relevant.

Capitalise when referring to LGBT+ event(s), the movement or the season (e.g. “Pride in London”, “happy Pride”). Do not refer to “Pride month” unless quoting someone else.

Use curly (“smart”) quotes in prose: “ ” for double quotes and ‘ ’ for single quotes.

Straight quotes (" and ') are acceptable inside code blocks and in frontmatter values where YAML parsing requires them.

Not a thing I set. See Goal.

Always uppercase: “RSS”. Use “RSS feed” or “RSS feeds” in prose; do not italicise.

The best kind of pop. Never hyphenated.

Never capitalise senior civil servant unless starting a sentence.

The senior cadre of the UK Civil Service. Capitalise when referring to the Senior Civil Service.

The current owner of Xitter.

A Nintendo games console. Italicise as a product name in prose: Switch, Switch 2. Consistent with the convention of italicising console and game titles.

Past tense of the action of sending a text message. Never “texted”.

Examples: “I text them”, “I have text them”.

The website that became Xitter in July 2023.

When describing events, posts or product behaviour from before the rebrand, “Twitter” is acceptable for historical accuracy. For present-day references, use “Xitter”.

A way for websites to communicate with each other.

See What are Webmentions?

A note written at the end of a week. No space between “week” and “note”. Pluralised as “weeknotes”.

See doingweeknotes.com.

To produce a weeknote.

Examples: “I weeknoted”, “She weeknotes”, “They are weeknoting”.

The website formally known as Twitter. Never “X”.

A post, posted on Xitter.

Always “YouTube”, with a capital “Y” and “T”. Never “Youtube” or “youtube”.