As a general rule the LIT Lab follows the Chicago Manual of Style. For tutorials that involve technical terms and user interface elements, the LIT Lab follows the Microsoft Manual of Style. For guided interviews, the Document Assembly Line documentation includes a detailed style guide.
This style guide includes some preferences and addresses some special cases.
In general, use sentence case for titles and headings. Use title case for the following:
- Titles of Docassemble interviews (Affidavit Disclosing Care or Custody Proceedings)
- Titles of documents and publications (LIT Lab Style Guide and LIT Blog)
- Names of things like projects (Document Assembly Line) software (QnA Markup and Find My Cite), classes (Legal Tech Class), conferences, (LIT Con), and teams (LIT Clinic & Fellows) in Microsoft Teams (but not channels)
- Blog post categories (Access to Justice Innovation) but not tags (artificial intelligence) unless the tag falls under one of the above exceptions
This is a handy tool for title case capitalization. (Make sure the Chicago Manual of Style radio button is selected.)
Since the Chicago Manual of Style does not include guidelines for punctuation in titles and headings, here are some guidelines:
- Periods are unnecessary unless the heading contains multiple sentences. If the heading contains multiple sentences, use the appropriate punctuation after each one.
- If the heading is a question or exclamation, include the question mark or exclamation point
- Use the serial comma if the heading contains a list of three or more things
The same guidelines should be used for most bulleted or numbered lists.