Grammar Guidelines

English Writing & Grammar Rules Checklist

1. Follow proper casing in the title:

App builder should be App Builder.

2. Alignment should be consistent.

Red ones are centre-aligned and blue ones are left-aligned. Make all left aligned. Follow consistent formatting in all slides of all PDFs.

3. Never use:- and L should be capital. Follow standard basic grammar rules.

4. Wrong spacing: There should never be any space before colon sign. There should always be a space after colon sign.

5. Check whether document/email contains any blank (extra) space.

6. Unnecessary capitalization issues. Don’t make letters unnecessarily capital.

7. Email writing formatting problems:

1. Subject line: Space before colon sign. There should be no space before colon.
2. :- Wrong colon sign. It should be :
3. There should be no extra space before point.

8. How to NOT write points:

1. Do NOT use circle brackets when you want to write the points in the list.
2. Put full stop and no brackets.

9. There should be no space after an opening bracket and before a closing bracket.

10. Do not add “Mr”, “Mrs”, “Ms”, “Dr”, “Dear” before the name of the person you are addressing an email/document to. Simply say “Hi [First Name],”, “Hello [First Name],” or just “[First Name],”.

11. Superlatives should not be used in technical documentation.

Basic Rules

1. Always use only one space (” “) following periods, commas, semicolons, colons, exclamation points, question marks, and quotation marks. Never use space (” “) before any of these punctuation marks.

2. Never use:- and number formatting like 1). Use 1.
3. Use no spaces on either side of a hyphen.
4. Use these rules for capitalization and store this article’s content in guidelines document: https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/capitalization/rules-for-capitalization-in-titles.html
5. “Capitalize all words in titles of publications and documents, except a, an, the, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, and, as, but, or, and nor.”
6. Check the capitalization of the words:
   1. The first letter in a sentence must be capitalized.
   2. The first word in quotations should be capital. Example: The waiter said, “My manager will be here shortly,” but he never came.
   3. Titles of people: Titles can be as simple as Mr., Mrs. or Dr.
   4. Job titles: For example, “While I was an intern, I got to shadow Senior Marketing Director Sam Jones for a day.”
   5. The letter “i” in iOS should always be small and OS should be capital.
   6. The pronoun “I”. The pronoun “I” is ALWAYS capitalized, no matter where it falls in a line.

11. Proper nouns must be start with capital letters.
    Example: Days, months, and holidays (e.g., Monday, May, and Christmas)
12. Do not add any space after or before “OR” (/) symbol
    Example: Correct: Option1/Option2   |    Incorrect: Option1 / Option2
13. There should not be any space before “?” question mark. 
14. Punctuation marks rules:
    https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/punctuation/what/fourteen-punctuation-marks.html

Phrases and English Words

NEVER use these phrases: “Do the needful”, “please revert”, “for the same”.

Use “take necessary actions”, “please respond” instead.

Prepone is NOT a word in the dictionary. Postpone is a word of course. Do not use “prepone” with American clients.

Use American English to communicate with American clients. Eg customize, digitize, color, behavior, etc.

Never use the word “kindly” in your emails. Use “please” instead.

PFA, PFB, etc. – These abbreviations are NOT standard and only used by Indians. Never use.

Number – Never use this word. The standard for this across the US is: “#”. “#” is shorthand for number. Ex: seat #210, member #101

Learnt is not a word in the US – use learned

When Not to Capitalize

A place where words are commonly capitalized and (generally) shouldn’t be capitalized is after a colon. Colons are often used before the introduction of a list. In this case, they’re usually not introducing a complete sentence and, as such, shouldn’t be capitalized. For example:

Here’s her favorite reading material: books, magazines, and travel guides.

Don’t stress too much about colons. We break down the five most important rules of colon usage here.

Similarly, you generally don’t capitalize after a semicolon. Even though a semicolon can be used to separate two independent clauses, they’re considered a part of the same sentence. For example:

Dad has always been a strict disciplinarian; however, he made an exception this time.

Remember how we capitalize days, months, and holidays? That remains true. However, don’t let seasons fall into the same category. We don’t need to capitalize “winter,” “spring,” “summer,” or “fall” unless it’s part of a title.

Remembering the Rules

How can you possibly remember all these rules? Are you a fan of mnemonic devices? They’re phrases that help people remember key information. Take a look at this sentence to help you remember each category:

For Bob Barker, the price is sometimes wrong, Mom says.

The first letter of each word stands for a category:

• F – First letter in a sentence
• B – Buildings (and other man-made structures)
• B – Borders (of regions, states, countries, etc.)
• T – Titles
• P – People
• I – I
• S – Schools
• W – Water
• M – Mountains
• S – Streets