Word Usage Guide

This word usage guide outlines specific how specific terms and phrases should be used and styled in content that appears on Chainguard's public-facing channels. Our goal in maintaining this guide is to help us achieve a consistent tone and voice across all of Chainguard's content.

Terms List

Any terms or phrases should be styled as they appear in this list. For example, the "c" in "Cosign" is capitalized; this means it should always be capitalized when referring to the container signing tool. Conversely, the "apk" entry specifies that it should never be capitalized; this includes at the beginning of a sentence or in a step title.

• apk - never capitalized
• apko - never capitalized
• Chainguard
• Chainguard Enforce - Use "Enforce" as a standalone name (as in, "Install the Enforce agent….") only sparingly and if it serves the rhetorical purpose. For example, "Enforce Signing"
• Chainguard Images - Avoid using the just "Images" in place of "Chainguard Images" unless doing otherwise would be awkward or repetitive
• command line - noun
• command-line - adjective, as in "command-line interface (CLI)"
• Cosign
• cyberattack - not "cyber attack"
• distribution - as in "Linux distribution." distro is also acceptable
• Fulcio
• Gb - gigabit
• GB - gigabyte
• GitHub
• Kubernetes - never "kubernetes," "k8s"
• Linux
• login - noun
• log in - verb
• log in to - not "login to" or "log into"
• melange - never capitalized
• open source - noun
• open-source - adjective
  • include a hyphen (as in "open-source") when used as an adjective
• primary and secondary - as in "primary and secondary servers." Favor inclusive language, and avoid offensive terms like "master" and "slave"
• README
• Rekor
• SBOM
• SBOMs - plural. When writing out the full phrase as a plural, use "Software Bills of Materials"
• Sigstore
• single sign-on - note the lower-case usage, per the Microsoft style guide
• Wolfi

Other general rules of thumb

In addition to the specific terms listed in the previous section, here are some general guidelines to keep in mind as you produce content at Chainguard.

• Default to US English spellings
• If you plan to use an acronym throughout a tutorial, its first appearance should be within a pair of parentheses after the longer, fully written-out phrase, as in "You can download the image's software bill of materials (SBOM)...."
• When discussing a third-party product or software, defer to the styling employed by the project's website or documentation. For example, you should always style it as "MongoDB", not "Mongodb" or "Mongo"
• Keep it short! Some words may "feel" more technical but there's often a shorter, more familiar word that would make a better substitute. For example, "utilize" can almost always be replaced with "use"
• If the word or phrase in question isn't covered in this guide, don't hesitate to ask the folks in the #docs Slack channel - we nerd out about this stuff

If this guide doesn't answer your question, feel free to ping the folks in the #docs Slack channel. We also encourage you to refer to the other resources found in the Style Guide.