A style guide is where you turn when you're not sure how to spell, capitalize, or punctuate a word or name. This is presented as a public service to Mac webmasters, who should feel free to contribute additions and suggest changes (email link below).

"...generally we'll go with the company preference, unless it's really bizarre."

Style, Product Names

• CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, always include the hyphen.
• disk, preferred over disc.
• DIMM, DIMMs, a type of memory module. Note the lower case "s" at the end of the plural.
• email is displacing e-mail, which displaced E-mail, by analogy with words such as ecommerce (which has no hyphen). We've received several objections to this one, but it is our preference.
• GB (gigabytes), both letters capitalized, used with leading space (e.g., 4 GB)
• hertz, Hz with leading space (e.g. 60 Hz)
• kilobits, Kb or kb
• kilobytes, KB or K? with or without leading space?
• hard drive, sometimes abbreviated HD. At Low End PC, the rule is spell it out whenever possible. Exception: discussing a computer with a list of specs, such as Power Mac 7500/132, 32 MB RAM, 1.2 GB HD, etc.
• iBook, iMac, iTools, iReview, the first letter is never capitalized. Some publications have tried - it looks ugly.
• Mb (megabits), the M is always capitalized, the b lower-case to represent bits (vs. bytes), should have a leading space.
• MB (megabytes), both letters capitalized, since upper-case B represents bytes (vs. bits), used with leading space (e.g. 64 MB)
• MHz (megahertz), H capitalized in honor of Mr. Hertz, used with leading space (e.g., 60 MHz)
• megs, short for megabytes, discouraged
• Microsoft, never MicroSoft, and it hasn't been Micro-Soft for ages.
• ns, nanosecond, a billionth of a second, generally used when measuring memory speed.
• PowerBook, one word, P and B always capitalized
• Power Mac, Power Macs, Power Macintosh, two words
• PowerPC, PPC, family of processors made by IBM and Motorola, not a synonym for Power Mac.
• RAM, Random Access Memory. Except when listing product specs, Low End Mac prefers to talk about memory or computer memory.
• SIMM, SIMMs, a type of memory module. Note the lower case "s" at the end of the plural.
• Web, a proper noun (there is only one World Wide Web), so it should always be capitalized when used to refer to the whole Web.
• webmaster, not capitalized
• website, Web site, both are common, although we are leaning toward the use of "website."

Site Names, URLs

These are taken from current usage on these sites and are the way I prefer to use them at Low End Mac. Most are presented without comment.

• 3dfx <http://www.3dfx.com/>
• Cnet <http://www.cnet.com/>, as used in their logo, uses vertical bar between C and N, many sites use Cnet or CNET.
• ixMicro <http://www.ixmicro.com/>, "I" never capitalized, "M" always capitalized, although the company seems to have settled on IXMICRO (all caps), this is ugly so we're sticking with the old form.
• Low End Mac <http:/>, three words, no hyphens (not Low-End Mac or LowEndMac)
• Low End PC <http://lowendpc.com/>, three words, no hyphens (not Low-End PC or LowEndPC)
• Slashdot <http://slashdot.org/>
• Voodoo2, Voodoo3, etc., no space between Voodoo and number, D is not capitalized (not VooDoo, Voodoo 2)

Please send additions, corrections to <webmaster@lowendpc.com>.

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