In general, Arm follows the guidelines in the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook
Use the following guidelines to avoid common errors and maintain consistent usage throughout Arm online and offline properties. In general, Arm follows the guidelines in the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook.
Use the official name or term on first reference, followed by the acronym in parentheses. Use the acronym for subsequent references. Do not capitalize the words on which an acronym is based unless they are proper nouns.
There are two specific types of abbreviations:
An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the first letters of a multiword term, name, or phrase, with those letters pronounced together as one word. For example, the abbreviation for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba) is pronounced as a word rather than as a series of letters.
An initialism is an abbreviation formed from the first letters of a multiword term, name, or phrase, with each letter pronounced separately. For example, the abbreviation for the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC) is pronounced as four separate letters.
Don’t spell out established initialisms like HTML, API, SSL, or VPN. But as the saying goes, "When in doubt, spell it out."
The plural of an acronym does not need an apostrophe: Developers can take advantage of APIs to integrate other enterprise systems.
Do not use the following abbreviations: "i.e.," "e.g.," and "et al." Instead, use their English equivalents: "that is," "for example," and "among others." Similarly, do not use "etc." If you want to imply additional examples in a list, introduce the list with "for example," "such as," or "including."
Correct: Arm creates products for use in a wide range of industries including healthcare, legal, manufacturing, and media.
Incorrect: Arm creates products for use in healthcare, legal, manufacturing, media, etc.
(See additional guidelines for use in Section 4, Writing in a Global Style.)
Adjectives are words or phrases naming an attribute that is added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it. English speakers unconsciously use adjectives in a specific order:
Order
Relating to
Examples
1
opinion
unusual, best
2
size
small, tall
3
physical quality
hard, pliable
4
shape
square, rectangular
5
age
young, old
6
color
blue, black
7
origin
British, Spanish
8
material
silicon, plastic
9
type
general-purpose, four-sided
Don’t use an ampersand in place of "and" in text unless it’s part of an official title or company name (Director of Security & Compliance, Hill & Knowlton) or part of a common abbreviation like M&A. However, it is acceptable in charts and other places where space is at a premium.
Do not use an apostrophe when forming a plural of a word or acronym. If you have more than one PC, you have several PCs, not several PC’s.
Not ARM. Legal reference to the company is Arm Ltd.
Arm follows AP style on capitalization: Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters of content titles, headlines, and headers. Do not capitalize industry names (healthcare, finance, manufacturing), technology categories and technologies (security, development tools, enterprise, processors), or other terms in general usage.
Do not capitalize generic names of product features (high-performance computing, single sign-on). However, trademarks and product names should be capitalized (CoreLink, Versatile).
Capitalize job titles only when used immediately before a name, without being set off by a comma. Do not capitalize occupational descriptions or titles that are set apart from a name with commas or that are not used with a person’s name.
Correct: Director of IT Operations Stan Smith led the implementation, or Stan Smith, director of IT operations, led the implementation, or our director of IT operations, Stan Smith, led the implementation.
Exceptions to this rule include attributions in sidebars and pull quotes, lists of speakers for trade-show sessions or webcasts, and lists of sponsors. In these cases, use initial capitals in the job title: Featured Speaker: Brian Fuller, Editor in Chief.
Arm uses the series – or Oxford – comma (the one preceding conjunctions such as "and" or "or" in a list).
Correct: Robotics will augment and enhance healthcare in key areas such as precision surgery, assisted living, and autonomous trollies in hospitals.
Incorrect: Robotics will augment and enhance healthcare in key areas such as precision surgery, assisted living and autonomous trollies in hospitals.
U.S. dollars can be indicated with just a dollar sign: $3,500. Non-U.S. dollars should be preceded by the appropriate code for the country, such as C$3,500 for Canadian dollars and AUS$3,400 for Australian dollars. Other currencies should appear with the appropriate sign, such as €, ¥ or £, with the U.S. equivalent indicated afterwards when both are needed: €3,500 ($4,445). Localized content should not include U.S. equivalents.
There are three types of dashes.
Hyphens, the shortest type, are used in multiword constructions like "bring-your-own" and "third-party." These constructions only call for hyphens when used as adjectives or compound modifiers, not when used as nouns or verbs. Note that words with the prefix "self" are an exception; they always take a hyphen. Do not use a hyphen to connect an -ly adverb to an adjective. Correct: A recently hired employee; a highly mobile worker. Incorrect: A recently-hired employee; a highly-mobile worker.
En-dashes are longer dashes used to indicate a range of numbers or dates, or to separate a term from its explanation. Unlike the hyphen, add a space before and after an en-dash when used for a range. If you can’t create an en-dash, a hyphen will do. Correct: IT can support 500 – 1,000 people. The conference will be held July 24 – 27.
Em-dashes are the longest type of dash. This is the right kind to use within text—for example, to set off an appositive phrase or interjection like this one—though it shouldn’t be overused. Do not add spaces before or after an em-dash. To form an em-dash, type two hyphens immediately after the preceding term; Word converts them into an em-dash automatically once you add the following term.
Dates should not be presented with ordinal numbers such as first, second, or 20th. Indicate a range of dates with an en-dash.
Correct: May 22 – 24, 2013Incorrect: May 22nd to 24th, 2013
It is acceptable to use "FY" and "Q" to indicate periods of time, such as in "FY 2012" and "Q4 2012." Note the space between the letters and the dates.
While citing sources is always necessary, footnotes sometime interrupt information absorption. If you can’t incorporate your source information into your copy, use endnotes at the end of a document or the end of a document section. Footnotes should always appear at the bottom of a table or figure. Cite the full name of the work, the publisher, the date published, and add a link to the work, if possible. Use a superscript number as the footnote indicator in endnotes and a superscript letter (as tables often contain numerals) in table footnotes. Use either of the following formats:
If author’s name is available: First name Last name, "Title of Web Page," Publishing Organization or Name of Website, publication date,
URL: If author’s name is unavailable: "Title of Work," Publishing Organization or Name of Website, publication date, URL.
Don’t use he/she or his/her to be inclusive of both men and women; there are better ways to accomplish this:
Use the second person. Correct: You can use the same login to access your data. Incorrect: A user can use the login to access all his data.
Use plural nouns and pronouns. If you choose this option, be sure to change verbs and other nouns and pronouns as needed. Correct: People should choose their own passwords.
In situations where the above options don’t work, use the pronouns that people choose to use for themselves or use they/them/their instead.
Use periods between U.S. and U.K.; other acronyms and abbreviations usually don’t require them. United States and United Kingdom should be spelled out when used as nouns, but not when used as adjectives.
Use words for numbers up to 10 in text form. Write numbers greater than 10 as Arabic numerals. Use a comma as the thousands separator for values greater than 999. Some examples:
A cluster with four PEs
Within five nanoseconds
There are 16 possible combinations
12,345.67
1,234,567.89
Always write numbers as Arabic numerals when you use them with an abbreviated unit of measure: 4 KB, 50 MHz.
Put a space between numbers and abbreviated units. When referring to quantities of certain sized items, numbers should be expressed in text: Correct: He gave the team six 80 mm rods. Incorrect: He gave the team 6 80 mm rods.
In inline lists, keep numbers and their units together. Correct: 16-bit and 32-bit. Incorrect: 16- and 32-bit
If a number starts a sentence, always write it in full. Rephrase the sentence if possible:
Forty registers are reserved for this process.
The system reserves 40 registers for this process.
Forty-eight bytes are used.
The system uses 48 bytes.
Use a period as a decimal point:
Avoid fractions, if possible. For example, use "half-byte" rather than 1/2 byte.
For ranges containing at least one number as an Arabic numeral, use "to" as the preposition. For ranges containing only Arabic numerals, use a hyphen: Correct: One to 15. Incorrect: 1-15.
Spell out "million," "billion," and "trillion" in sentences. Abbreviations should only be used in headlines or tables where space is tight. These are: million (m), billion (bn), trillion (tn).
Do not use a hyphen to connect the figure and the words. Correct: 4.75 million. Incorrect: 4.75-m
Until recently, according to the AP Stylebook, "over" referred to spatial relationships (the cow jumped over the moon) and "more than" referred to quantity (their salaries went up more than $100 a week). However, the AP Stylebook has changed its stance; now both terms are acceptable to indicate a greater quantity.
Limit use of parentheses except when indicating acronym abbreviations. One alternative is to use an appositive, which is a descriptive or illustrative phrase set off by commas or em dashes. Always remember to include the second comma.
Correct: Take action on the user’s behalf, such as triggering a firmware update, with a clear cryptographically enforced policy on local devices to limit their power to the least-possible privilege.
Incorrect: Take action on the user’s behalf (such as triggering a firmware update) with a clear cryptographically enforced policy on local devices to limit their power to the least-possible privilege.
We think of people as human beings, not as just another element of the computing environment. In this spirit, it’s usually best to refer to people as people, not users. A few guidelines:
When "people" seems too broad, consider using "your workforce" as an alternative.
When speaking to an IT audience, "users" is the preferred way to talk about specific groups of individuals defined by the solutions or capabilities they use. "End users" is redundant IT-speak; leave out the "end."
Your ear should be the final test. If it sounds strange or off-tone to you, find a new word.
Spell the word "percent" instead of using the % symbol, except in headlines and charts. Always use numerals with percent, even for numbers below 10, unless the number is the first word of a sentence.
1 – 2 percent
3 percent
12 percent
Note that the words "percent" and "percentage" are sometimes interchangeable. The general guideline is to use "percent" with a number and "percentage" without a number.
Fifty percent of people surveyed said they worked remotely at least once a week.
What percentage of people work remotely at least once a week?
Do not use quotes in marketing copy except to quote a speaker. They are not necessary for indicating emphasis or drawing attention to a new or unfamiliar term; the context of your writing should be enough to accomplish this.
Correct: Healthcare today is primarily based on doctor- patient face-to-face interactions, with the burden resting heavily on the patient.
Incorrect: Healthcare today is primarily based on doctor- patient "face-to-face" interactions, with the burden resting heavily on the patient.
When quoting sources, use present tense unless referencing an incident that occurred in the past that requires an attribution in the past tense.
"At Arm, we believe that standards and government regulations generally describe yesterday, and in a world as fast-moving as the IoT, we need to describe tomorrow," Julie Jervis says.
Do not use slashes to create terms such as work/life balance or client/server computing. Use hyphens instead (work-life balance, client-server computing). The exception is 24/7, which should include a slash. Do not put a space on either side of the slash.
Do not use double spaces after periods (or anywhere else). This is left over from the typewriter days; modern software makes this unnecessary.
Spell out the names of U.S. states, U.K. counties, and Canadian provinces when they appear alone without a city name, except where space is limited, such as in tables.
In standard American English, "which" is nonrestrictive and "that" is restrictive. (Rule of thumb: If you can delete the phrase in question and the sentence still makes sense, it’s a nonrestrictive phrase and needs "which" and a comma.)
Nonrestrictive: Click on the link, which appears in the fat footer at the bottom of the screen.
Restrictive: Click on the "Show Me" link that only appears in the fat footer at the bottom of the screen.
Avoid using x as a substitute for times. Correct: Accelerate app delivery by two to four times for standard web pages and up to seven times for some enterprise app data. Incorrect: Accelerate app delivery by 2x to 4x for standard web pages and up to 7x for some enterprise app data.
Always use the correct trademark symbol with the first or most prominent appearance of the trademark in the body of text. Please refer to the Arm trademark list for guidance on the correct symbol to use.
Do not use trademark symbols in headlines unless there is no accompanying text, in which case you must use them.
Always include the correct trademark notice statement to acknowledge Arm’s ownership of its trademarks. Suitable notices are provided for each Arm trademark in the Arm trademark list.
Always use trademarks as adjectives accompanied by an approved noun. Please refer to the Arm trademark list for approved nouns for each Arm word trademark. Never use a trademark as a noun, a verb, or in the possessive or plural form.
Verbs tell the audience what they can do or learn. Starting some sentences with imperative verbs (such as "Think…," "Learn…," or "Imagine…") encourages engagement and action. Avoid gerunds as verbs. Abuse of gerunds tends to lead to more passive and difficult-to-read sentences. For example, "He likes to get up at 6 a.m. every day" is punchier than "He prefers getting up at 6 a.m."
In common English usage, "while" can mean "because," "during," "at the same time," or "although." Never use "whilst." Use "because" when you mean "because," use "while" when you mean "at the same time," and make sure the context makes each usage clear.
Correct: You may think your writing skills are excellent, but keep in mind that everyone needs an editor. Incorrect: While you may think your writing skills are excellent, keep in mind that everyone needs an editor.
