Capitalize proper nouns and adjectives#

Proper nouns and adjectives include the names of people, places, companies, organizations, products, languages, protocols, and some technologies, as well as trademarks.

Be aware that some of these names might have nonstandard or no capitalization. Always follow the capitalization that's used by the company, shown in a dictionary, or accepted as standard in the industry.

For the correct capitalization of Rackspace product names, see the Rackspace Cloud corporate website.

For the correct capitalization of some commonly used third-party names, see Third-party names and trademarks.

Capitalize most abbreviations#

Most abbreviated forms of terms use all capitals, although exceptions exist. Also, be aware that the corresponding spelled-out terms of abbreviations are often not capitalized. When in doubt about the capitalization of an abbreviation or its spelled-out term, consult a dictionary, industry style guide, reputable website, or editor. Following are some examples.

For more information, see Abbreviations.

Capitalization in job titles#

Within Rackspace technical documentation, use the following rules for capitalization in job titles:

Capitalize team names#

When you use team names in technical documents, use initial capitals as shown in the following table:

Capitalize UI labels as shown on the UI#

When you're documenting part of the interface within a procedure or other type of article or topic, match the capitalization used on the interface.

However, when you use terms from the interface as common nouns, don't capitalize the terms.

Capitalize the names of product components as appropriate#

Follow the capitalization of major component names that's established by Marketing, Legal, and the product teams. However, be wary of overcapitalization of product terms. Not every feature or object in a product is a proper noun. For example, the Cloud Servers service enables users to create a server, not a Server. When the user creates a server, the user specifies an image, flavor, and network, not an Image, Flavor, and Network. A Performance server has a data disk and a system disk, not a Data disk and a System disk. A user uses Cloud Load Balancer to create a load balancer, not a Load Balancer.

Many terms that might be capitalized on the interface aren't capitalized when used as common nouns. When in doubt, consult an existing style sheet, an editor, or the product team (but be aware that product teams sometimes tend to overcapitalize terms). Following are some tips to help you determine whether a noun should be capitalized:

• Generally, if you can have more than one of something, it's a common noun and therefore not capitalized.
• When a common noun follows the name of a product or component, generally that noun isn't capitalized.
• When you refer generally to a component, you can use lowercase (as in the utility or the agent).

Don't capitalize common nouns#

Most of the time, we have no trouble determining whether a noun is proper or common. However, we have a tendency to capitalize product-specific terms even when they're really just being used as common nouns. A common noun denotes a whole class of something (for example, servers) or a random member of a class (for example, a server). As a general rule, if you can have more than one of something, it's a common noun and therefore not capitalized.

Don't use all capitals for emphasis#

To emphasize a term, show it in italics. To emphasize an important piece of information, consider setting it apart structurally, perhaps as a note.

Reference to other capitalization guidelines#

The following table provides links to other capitalization guidelines in the style guide: