Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
Various studies of internet scenarios and usability have determined that the interface of Web
applications must also support users in their work. Consistency in the texts on the user interface
is an important part of how users perceive our software. This applies not only to terminology, but
also to writing style, to ensure that SAP's software has a professional appearance and a consistent
look and feel. Users should not notice whether the texts they see are the original language of the
interface or a translation, and should see no difference in style regardless of whether the texts
were written in Germany, the United States, India, or wherever.
While capitalization is not something that end users pay much attention to, consistency of
capitalization not only improves the look and feel of the software but also can help to save costs
considerably. English, for example, is the source language for 10 other languages at SAP. If the
same text is written in two different ways, even if the difference is only in capitalization or
punctuation, it becomes two distinct texts for the languages that translate from English. This
slows down translation and increases the risk of inconsistent terminology in those languages,
which can confuse the end users.
If you write system texts in English - regardless of whether you are a developer, technical author,
or translator - you can help to ensure a consistent interface and keep costs down by adhering to
the capitalization guidelines below.
Title Case
Title case means that the first letter of each word is capitalized, except for certain small words,
such as articles and short prepositions. For more detailed information about what is meant by
title case, see the Quick Guide to Capitalization in English at SAP below.
Sentence Style
In sentence style, only the first letter of the sentence or phrase is capitalized. All words after that
are written in lower case, except for proper nouns.
Error messages
Status messages
Complete sentences and questions on the user interface (such as Do you want to save? or
All unsaved data will be lost.)
Capitalize
Nouns
Verbs (including is and other forms of be)
Participles
Adverbs (including than and when)
Adjectives (including this, that, and each)
Pronouns (including its)
Subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that)
Prepositions and conjunctions with five or more letters (between, without, during, about,
because, through)1
First and last words, no matter what part of speech they are
Prepositions that are part of a verb phrase (Logging On, Setting Up)
Both elements of hyphenated words (How-To, Country-Specific)2
Words and phrases in parentheses as you would capitalize them if they did not appear in
parentheses
Any words, phrases, fragments, or sentences after a colon or semicolon
Do Not Capitalize
1
Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) rule is not to capitalize any prepositions.
2
This rule differs slightly to the CMS rule but is more appropriate for our documentation and
user interfaces.