Snowplow style guide

This guide is for anyone writing for Snowplow. Please follow these rules so that all Snowplow content is consistent and easy to read.

This includes writings such as:

• Technical product documentation, including:
  • The main documentation site (created with Docusaurus),
  • Public Knowledge Base articles (Zendesk)
  • GitHub READMEs
• Other API documentation generated from code documentation, by tools such as Swagger or API Extractor
• Release notes
• Text within the Console
• Blog posts
• Other marketing content for the main Snowplow website

This guide is linked from the docs GitHub README.

Using this guide with an AI tool​

If you're using an LLM AI tool to help you write, provide it with this guide.

The style guide file is found here. Depending which AI you are using, you will need to copy the file contents, or save the file.

Writing new content​

If you have only a free account for the AI, manually provide the style guide for each chat.

Example prompt:

I'm writing a blog post to advertise a new product release. Here is the company style guide. Follow the rules for all generated writing.

If you have a paid account, create a summarized version of the style guide to set in your project instructions, so that it will apply to all chats in the project.

Example prompt:

Here is the company style guide. Create a compact version that I can set as custom project instructions.

Example instructions for chatGPT:

This is for writing documentation on Snowplow (docs.snowplow.io) in markdown format. Create a code window.

all headings sentence case
[etc.]

Editing existing content​

Try asking the AI to create an edited version that is consistent with the style guide. It might do a reasonable job of updating things like formatting and spelling (then again, it might not). It is less likely to do a good job of improving less easily-defined things, such as replacing an unnecessary explanation of a concept with a link to a Fundamentals page.

Example prompt:

Here is an existing piece of documentation, and the company style guide. Update the documentation to be compliant with the style guide. Do a first pass looking for and improving on any larger structural or design problems. Then a second pass looking for more specific technical problems.

Tell me any issues you find in the content. I expect to get a full updated version that aligns with the style guide.

Alternatively, ask it just to just list problems rather than trying to edit the text itself. It will likely still miss some problems (and hallucinate others) but this can provide a useful checklist for improvements.

Example prompt:

Here is an existing piece of documentation, and the company style guide. Go through every section in the style guide (everything at header level h3 i.e. ###) and work out whether the documentation complies with it or not.

If the page is not following that rule, tell me so and the evidence for your decision. I expect to get a list of some of the headings from the style guide, along with the associated evidence, and advice on updating the content.

Examples​

Here are two pieces of older content that only partially follow the style guide. You can see the original text and the text that has been updated to match the style guide rules:

• Documentation: annotated screenshot; original text; updated text
• Blog post: annotated screenshot; original text; updated text

Grammar and spelling​

US English​

• Use US English spelling

  ✅	❌
  behavioral data	behavioural data
  data center	data centre
  organize	organise
  modeled	modelled

• Reference for US vs UK differences

• Be careful with "anonymization". We accidentally used the British spelling for some config options in our trackers (withServerAnonymisation in the JavaScript tracker, serverAnonymisation and userAnonymisation on mobile)

• Don't worry about US vs UK grammar rules aside from spelling

Data​

• Use "data" as singular

  ✅	❌
  the data is captured	the data are captured

Set up and log in​

• "Set up" is a verb, "setup" is a noun or adjective

  • Prefer "configuration" over "setup"

  • Avoid the hyphenated version, "set-up", because it's unclear

    ✅ verb	✅ noun	✅ adjective
    set up your tracking	your tracking implementation setup	setup page
    	your tracking implementation configuration

• "Log in" is a verb, "login" is a noun or adjective

  • Prefer "credentials" over "login"

  • Avoid the hyphenated version, "log-in", because it's unclear

    ✅ verb	✅ noun	✅ adjective
    log in to your account	set up a login for your account	login page
    	set up credentials for your account

Formatting and punctuation​

Quotation marks​

• Use double quotation marks (") rather than single (')

  ✅	❌
  the "Filters" button	the 'Filters' button

• For documentation, use straight quotes (") rather than smart ones (“)

  ✅	❌
  a "spiky" value	a “spiky” value

• For all other writing, smart quotes are fine as long as this is consistent within the piece of writing

  ✅	✅
  a "spiky" value	a “spiky” value

Oxford comma​

• Use a comma before the last item in a list

  ✅	❌
  digital products, customer experiences, and fraud mitigation	digital products, customer experiences and fraud mitigation

Titles and headings​

• Headings never finish with punctuation (no full stops, colons, etc.)

• Use only heading levels 1, 2 and 3

• The title of the page should have header level 1 (#)

• Subheadings should be H2 (##), with any sections under that as H3 (###)

• Do not use smaller headings - they look confusingly like normal text

  • Docusaurus doesn't include smaller headings in the table of contents

• For documentation and release notes, use sentence case for titles and headings

  ✅	❌
  Configuring how events are sent	Configuring How Events Are Sent

• For the main website and blog posts, use title case

  ✅	❌
  Configuring How Events Are Sent	Configuring how events are sent

Bold and italic​

• Highlight specific key words or phrases using bold (**, preferred) or italic (_)

  • Choose bold or italic, don't combine them for the same words

• Use bold for UI components that the reader will interact with: page titles, tabs, buttons, dropdown menus, checkboxes, etc.

• Don't make entire paragraphs bold or italic

  ✅	❌
  events are automatically tracked once configured	events are automatically tracked once configured
  click on the Add action button	click on the Add action button
  the Settings page	the "Settings" page

Code​

• Use inline code (single backticks, `) for names of tables, fields, columns, classes, file names, etc.

• If the name has underscores or is all lower case, it should probably be marked as code (rather than in bold or with apostrophes)

  ✅
  snowplow_fractribution_channel_counts
  iglu:com.acme/context/jsonschema/1-0-0
  a single geo_location field
  an event_id UUID string
  tracking a ScreenView event

Lists (bullets and numbers)​

• Introduce the whole list with a sentence ending in a colon

• Start each item with a capital letter

• Don't put a full stop at the end of the sentence

• Exception: list items that have multiple sentences within them should have full stops at the end

• Lists should be consistent - either single sentence (no full stop) or multiple sentences (with full stop)

• There should be no more than seven items in the list

• When using a colon to make a kind of list item header, the subsequent sentence starts lowercase, like when using colons normally

  • Avoid using hyphens for list item "headers"

  ✅	❌
  * Make tracking implementation easier	* make tracking implementation easier
  * Boolean: the value will be interpreted as a boolean	* Boolean: The value will be interpreted as a boolean.
  2. Remove the attribute entirely	2. Remove - remove the attribute entirely
  Make the following changes: - Replace com.myvendor with your company domain - Leave jsonschema as-is	Make the following changes: - replace com.myvendor with your company domain - leave jsonschema as-is

Tables​

• Text inside tables should start with a capital letter
• Exception: code and related text should be formatted as inline code, with appropriate capitalization (e.g. true)
• Text should be consistent, either single sentence (no full stop) or multiple sentences (with full stop)

Ampersands​

• Use "and" rather than "&"

• This is partly for consistency and aesthetic reasons, but also helps with screen reader accessibility

  ✅	❌
  version and amend	version & amend
  User and Marketing Analytics visualization	User & Marketing Analytics visualization

Writing style​

Tone​

• For documentation, release notes, and the main website, use a calm, encouraging, professional tone

  • Contractions such as "don't" are fine
  • Try not to stress out the reader with cautions and warnings

• For blog posts, a more casual and friendly tone is welcome

  ✅	❌
  press enter	make sure you press enter
  specify	you must be careful to specify

Self-promotion​

• For blog posts and the main website, it's important to say how great Snowplow is

• For all other writing, this is inappropriate

  • Documentation must not sound like sales or marketing collateral

• Blog posts should not be linked to from the documentation

  Marketing	Documentation
  stream your enhanced events effortlessly to destinations	stream your enhanced events to destinations
  allows users to easily record	allows users to record
  create events quickly and accurately	create events
  we have the best features to do X	we do X

Brevity​

• Explain the point as simply as possible, without any extra words or phrases that don't add meaningful information

  ❌
  simply
  on top of that
  quickly

• Importantly, don't explain concepts: link to existing pages about them such as those in the Fundamentals docs section

  • This includes events, entities and context, schemas, enrichment, the structure of the data, failed events, etc.

Voice​

• Use active rather than passive voice

  ✅	❌
  the Collector receives events	events are received by the Collector

  • Exception: use passive voice if it makes for better writing

    ✅	❌
    Set up your tracking and send events. These events are received by the Collector	Set up your tracking and send events. The Collector receives the events

Pronouns​

• Refer to the reader directly as "you" (second-person pronoun) where possible

  ✅	❌
  you can find your organization's ID	the user can find their organization's ID

• Use "the user" to refer to users of the reader's products - the people who are generating the data

  ✅
  you can track information about the user's browser

• For documentation, primarily refer to Snowplow as "Snowplow"

  • Exception: use "our", "we", "us" (first-person pronouns) if it makes for a better sentence

    ✅	❌
    Snowplow supports two types of Iglu registry	we support two types of Iglu registry
    Snowplow provides	we provide
    but you can also build your own	but we also encourage building your own
    use the Snowplow trackers	use our trackers
    because we discard stray pings	because Snowplow discards stray pings

• For release notes, blog posts, and the main website, using first-person pronouns as well as "Snowplow" is fine

  ✅
  we are pleased to announce
  we have fixed a bug
  the Snowplow trackers

Timelessness​

• For all documentation except for migration guides, stay within the current moment in time

  • We won't remember to come back and update it

  • The documentation is not an appropriate place to announce upcoming features

    ❌
    currently
    in the future
    you can now
    Snowplow plans to
    latest

• For migration guides, release notes, and all other writing, it's fine to compare to the past, or make reference to already-announced upcoming features

  • Referring to previous functionality is the point of migration guides, after all

    ✅
    the tracker now supports
    will be coming soon
    currently

Exclamation marks​

• For documentation and release notes, avoid exclamation marks

  ✅	❌
  That's it for installation.	That's it for installation!

• For other writing, occasional exclamation marks are fine

  • They can help maintain a friendly, casual tone

    ✅
    keep your data AI-ready from collection to delivery!

Emojis​

• For most documentation, emojis can be used sparingly, to provide information

  • Emojis must not be used for decoration

    ✅	❌
    ✅ Geolocation entity	🏔️ “Glass-box” technical architecture

• For release notes and API documentation, no emojis at all

• For blog posts and the main website, occasional emojis are fine

  • They can help maintain a friendly, casual tone

    ✅
    🎉 Reduce your data loading costs by up to 80%.

Diagrams and images​

• Adding diagrams and images is encouraged
• Diagrams and images should have white backgrounds
• For images, use .webp (preferred - the file size is smaller) or .png format
• Images should be a sensible size (max 2000px x 500px)
• Highlighting the relevant part of an image is recommended
• For documentation diagrams, Mermaid code is recommended as they adjust automatically

Inclusive language​

Allowlist and denylist​

• Use allowlist and denylist instead of the older white/blacklist terminology

  ✅	❌
  allowed form elements	whitelisted form elements
  allowlisted form elements

Gendered language​

• Avoid gendered language

• Use plural, or the gender-neutral "they" third-person pronoun

  ✅	❌
  users will need to	he will need to
  they will need to	he/she will need to
  five person-hours	five man-hours

Snowplow-specific terms​

Snowplow​

• Snowplow is called Snowplow, not Snowplow Analytics

• Most products can have "Snowplow" added to their name if it helps clarify what's being referred to

  ✅
  the Snowplow JavaScript tracker
  the Snowplow Collector endpoint
  the Snowplow dbt data models

Capitalization​

• A few products/concepts always have capital letters

  ✅
  Data Product Studio
  Snowtype
  Snowplow Customer Data Infrastructure
  Data Model Packs

• Most products or features should not have capital letters when being used in a sentence

  ✅	❌
  track a page view	track a Page View
  creating data products	creating Data Products
  all the source applications	all the Source Applications
  Unified Digital data model	Unified Digital Data Model
  stream that contains all of your failed events	stream that contains all of your Failed Events
  custom self-describing event	custom Self-describing event
  Snowplow tag template	Snowplow Tag Template

• Product names should be in normal text, not code markup

  ✅	❌
  Snowplow CLI	snowplow-cli

Deprecated terminology​

• Use "entity", not "context"

  • It's unavoidable to use "context" when referring to some table columns or APIs, but use the correct nomenclature around them anyway

  • Link to the Fundamentals page about entities if it feels unclear

    ✅	❌
    these entities provide some context to the event	these contexts provide some context to the event
    all versions of the entity	all versions of the context
    pass a list of entities using the context key	pass a list of contexts using the context key
    the derived entities	the derived contexts

• Use "self-describing event", not "unstructured event"

  ✅	❌
  custom self-describing events	custom unstructured events

• Use "failed events", not "bad rows"

  • Exception: if specifically referring to the legacy bad row JSON format and associated tooling

    ✅	❌
    where your failed event files are	where your bad rows files are
    the bad rows format

• Use "visualization", not "data application"

  ✅	❌
  the Marketing Attribution visualization	the Marketing Attribution data app

Pipeline components​

• Console is capitalized, and doesn't have a definite article (no "the")

• It can also be called "BDP Console" or "Snowplow BDP Console"

  • This is fine at the start of a piece of writing but feels overly wordy if used throughout, so maybe open with that then just call it "Console" subsequently

    ✅	❌
    data structures in Console	data structures in the console
    data structures in BDP Console	data structures in the Snowplow Console

• Collector is capitalized, and gets a definite article ("the")

  • Use "the Collector endpoint" where possible for clarity - the reader might not know what we mean by "Collector", but they probably know what an endpoint is

    ✅
    events hit the Collector
    events hit the Collector application
    events hit the Collector endpoint

• Enrich is capitalized, but doesn't always get a definite article ("the")

  ✅
  enabled by default within the Enrich application
  enabled by default within Enrich
  Enrich can enrich an event

• All the Loaders are capitalized, and get a definite article ("the")

  ✅	❌
  the Lake Loader on AWS	the lake loader on AWS
  the BigQuery Loader reads enriched events	BigQuery loader reads enriched events

• Iglu is capitalized, as are Iglu Central and Iglu Server, but not any other Iglu components

  ✅	❌
  an Iglu client resolving a schema from Iglu Central	an Iglu Client resolving a schema from Iglu Central
  setting up an instance of the Iglu Server	setting up an instance of the Iglu server
  the Iglu webhook adapter	the Iglu Webhook adapter

Trackers​

• The trackers have the specific language capitalized, followed by lowercase "tracker"

• Refer to the iOS and Android trackers together as the "native mobile" trackers (no capitalization)

  ✅	❌
  the Java tracker	the Java Tracker
  the Snowplow Python tracker	the Snowplow Python Tracker
  the native mobile trackers	the mobile native trackers

• Use "JavaScript tracker" to refer to the web trackers collectively - the one loaded via tags and the one installed using npm (a.k.a. browser tracker)

  • This doesn't apply within the docs pages for the web trackers themselves

    ✅	❌
    track a page view using the JavaScript tracker	track a page view using the web trackers

Events without schemas​

• Use "baked-in events" for events that don't have a schema

• Specifically, these are page views, page pings, and the legacy ecommerce transaction events

• We've previously referred to them as primitive, canonical, or standard events

  ✅
  baked-in events aren't described by a schema

Versions​

• Refer to specific versions as "version X.Y.Z" or just "X.Y.Z"

• It's not necessary to put all 3 numbers if there aren't any patches

  ✅	❌
  install version 1.3.0	install v1.3.0
  since 0.12	since v0.12

General technical terms​

Acronyms​

• Acronyms should be in capitals

  ✅
  HTTP
  CDI
  CLI
  API
  SQL
  SDK
  URL

• Some can be pluralized with an "s", but not all

  ✅	❌
  JSON	JSONs
  JSON schemas
  APIs
  SDKs
  URLs

• For the documentation website, we have a docs plugin that adds a dotted line and a tooltip explanation to acronyms, e.g. hovering over "BDP" will show that it stands for "Behavioral Data Platform": add new acronym definitions to the src/remark/abbreviations.js file to enable this behavior

• (Technically, these are all initialisms, not acronyms)

Capitalization​

• Third-party products should be capitalized as appropriate

  ✅
  Google
  Snowflake
  dbt
  Kafka
  npm

• Don't use capitalization to highlight things

  ✅	❌
  using machine learning	using Machine Learning
  due to an enrichment failure	due to an Enrichment Failure

• Use lower case for "web"

  ✅	❌
  a web browser	a Web browser

Hyphenation​

• "Real-time" is hyphenated if it's used as an adjective

  • It's two separate words if it's being used as a noun

    ✅ adjective	✅ noun
    data available in real-time streams	data available in real time

• "Back-end" and "front-end" are hyphenated

  • Strictly speaking, they should only be hyphenated if they're used as adjectives, and two separate words when used as nouns

  • We are going for consistency instead of being entirely grammatically correct here

    ✅ adjective	✅ noun
    front-end developers	working on the front-end
    back-end tracking	a storage back-end

• "Server-side" and "client-side" are hyphenated

  ✅	❌
  ingestion from server-side	ingestion from server side
  Google Tag Manager Server-side	Google Tag Manager Server Side
  enable client-side anonymous tracking	enable client side anonymous tracking

• Use "ecommerce" without hyphen or capitalization (similar to "email")

  • Exception: you're referring to a specific Snowplow product or feature, in which case it should be capitalized

    ✅	❌
    track ecommerce events	track e-commerce events
    the Ecommerce plugin	the E-commerce plugin
    the Ecommerce data model	the eCommerce data model

Accessibility​

Images​

• Images should have alt text provided

• Save the image using a useful file name

• Guidelines for writing alt text

  ✅	❌
  	
  snowbridge-architecture.png	image.png

Links​

• Links should be clearly described, either by the preceding text or the link itself

• Use the name of the page you're linking to where possible

• Guidelines for writing link text

  ✅	❌
  for more information, see [Tracking specific events]()	for more information, see [this page]()
  the schema for this event is found [here]()	[here]() is the schema for this event

Markdown formatting​

Bullet point lists​

• It's ok to use - or * for the list bullet points, since they come out looking the same

Admonitions​

• This applies to the main documentation site only

• Highlight blocks of text using the built-in Docusaurus admonitions feature

• Use admonitions sparingly; having multiple within one page is overwhelming

• Set a custom heading where possible

  ✅	❌
  :::info Function signature	:::info

• Use "Tip" blocks to encourage readers to take action

  ✅
  :::tip Avoiding duplicate column names Make sure you include a prefix value to avoid duplicate column names. :::

• Use "Note" or "Info" blocks to highlight information that doesn't necessarily require action, such as that about a newer version being available, how a specific component works, or what versions are supported

• The "Warning" and "Danger" blocks are reserved for information about potential data loss or permissions breaches

Code​

• Use code blocks (triple backticks, ```) for code examples

• Specify the language next to the opening backticks, so that the code block is rendered correctly

• For the main documentation site only: if the rendering doesn't look right, make sure that the specified language is listed under prism: additionalLanguages in the docusaurus.config.js file

  ✅
  ```json {"accessToken":"string"} ```