Language

Guidelines for using consistent spelling and terminology in the UI.

Spelling

Use American English when writing UI copy. American English is a version of the English language used in the United States. It's sometimes called United States English or U.S. English.

Certain words are spelled differently in American English and British English. You'll find some of these key spelling differences in the following sections.

Verbs that end with 'ize' or 'yze'

In American English, verbs that end with 'ize' usually end with 'ise' in British English. Similarly, verbs that end with 'yze' in American English usually end with 'yse' in British English.

American English	British English
organize	organise
authorize	authorise
analyze	analyse

Nouns that end with 'or'

In American English, nouns that end with 'or' usually end with 'our' in British English.

American English	British English
flavor	flavour
color	colour
behavior	behaviour

Nouns that end with 'ense'

In American English, nouns that end with 'ense' usually end with 'ence' in British English.

American English	British English
license	licence
defense	defence
pretense	pretence

Nouns that end with 'og'

In American English, nouns that end with 'og' usually end with 'ogue' in British English.

American English	British English
dialog	dialogue
catalog	catalogue
epilog	epilogue

Case and capitalization

Use sentence case by default. This goes for navigation menus, titles and headers, buttons, and so on.

Do: Sentence case fits most situations.

Don't: Capitalize every word in buttons or titles.

Even with sentence case, make sure to capitalize the following terms and expressions:

• Branded terms like solution and application names. For example, always write Elastic Observability, not elastic observability.
• Acronyms, such as URL and API.

Note that some names don't need to be capitalized when they're used as common names. For example, Elastic Cloud Serverless and our serverless architecture are both correct.

Punctuation

Ellipsis

Only use ellipsis for truncated text or situations that require the user to wait.

• Do: Page loading... not Elastic offers many capabilities such as dashboards, machine learning, synthetics monitoring...

Exclamation mark

Avoid exclamation marks in most cases. A single exclamation mark when sharing exciting news may be appropriate.

Oxford comma

Use the Oxford comma before the final item in a list.

• Do: Elastic's solutions are Elasticsearch, Observability, and Security not Elastic's solutions are Elasticsearch, Observability and Security

Periods (full stops)

Use periods with:

• description text
• messages
• notifications
• list items that are complete sentences

Don't use periods with:

• headers
• titles
• placeholders
• list items that are incomplete sentences

Contractions

Use contractions if they make your text flow more naturally, such as "didn't" instead of "did not" and "can't" instead of "cannot."

Didn't find what you were looking for?

Do: Use contractions if they make the text easier to read.

Did not find what you were looking for?

Don't: Without the contraction, this text sounds stilted.

Vocabulary

Check Word choice for guidance on specific terms to use or to avoid.