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Design System

Writing conventions

Formatting

Capitalization

Use sentence casing for all titles, labels, and UI components. Follow the English Capitalization Rules. These rules require that certain words, like proper nouns and the first word in a sentence, start with a capital letter.

Sentence casing is more commonly used in the English language, making it more familiar to our users who have English as a second language. This style also reflects our informative and conversational tone.

Product and feature names

In general, if a feature or product is not exclusive to Certara, such as project, study, tables, or data packages, then keep it lowercase. But if it’s a special Certara gem and marketable as its own product or bundle, such as Spec Designer or P21 Enterprise, then go ahead and capitalize it.

When to use sentence casing:

  • The project
  • The study
  • The data package
  • The dataset
  • The analysis
  • The table
  • The figure
  • The settings
  • The terminology
  • The standards
  • The define
  • The report
  • The study spec
  • The change request
  • The fix tips
  • etc…

When to use Title Casing:

  • The Spec Designer
  • The Rule Designer
  • The Trial Designer
  • The Figure Designer
  • The Table Designer
  • The Data Exchange
  • The Spec Management
  • The Issue Management
  • The Metadata Repository
  • The TFL Module
  • The Report Module

When to use ALL CAPS:

  • File extensions when they are alone. For example, ZIP, XPT, SAS7BDAT

Bold

When in doubt, do not bold.

Use bold sparingly and only where strong emphasis is required. Do not use bold to create a heading or emphasize proper nouns, user input, or checkbox titles.

In the majority of cases, punctuation does not appear in bold when the preceding word is bold. Punctuation is bold only when the entire sentence is bold. If only certain words are bold, the punctuation following them remains in standard font.

Italics

Use italics for emphasis, citations, or defining a term. You can also use it for UI elements that might change, like a field name or user input.

You can also use italics in places where you would normally use bold but the UI doesn’t support it. For example, in a dialog header or UI message.

Do not use italics if the item is also a hyperlink.

See bold for more information about how to format UI elements and punctuation.

Punctuation

Periods

Use only one space after a period. Avoid periods in headers, titles, field descriptions, and menu names. Use them to complete description text in the product, messages, and notifications. Do not use them in a bulleted list unless the list item is a complete sentence.

  • Yes: Public room
  • No: Public room.

Commas

Use the Oxford or serial comma to offset the final item in a list.

  • Yes: We use sentence case in all titles, headings, menu items, and buttons.
  • No: We use sentence case in all titles, headings, menu items and buttons.

Ellipses (…)

Truncation

Ellipses are often used to indicate that text has been cut off or shortened when it doesn’t fit within a given space. To prevent truncation, consider the following strategies:

  • Condense UI messages and prioritize essential details at the beginning.
  • Utilize text wrapping or other methods instead of cutting off text.

Ensure to test your designs across various screen widths and zoom levels to avoid truncation issues.

In cases where truncation is unavoidable, offer an alternative method for users to access the complete text for improved accessibility and usability. Focus on the most crucial part of the message for users, typically the start or end, which may require truncating the middle section of the text.

For components that involve truncation, the ellipsis should directly follow the last visible character without any additional space (e.g., Sign up for…).

  • Example: This message is trunca…

Ellipses button component

A button with an ellipsis icon (not the same as text) is used to expand more actions. It’s typically used in cards or for horizontal sets of actions when space is limited.

Exclamation marks

Avoid exclamation marks! They should only be used for exciting or new things! At most, there should only be one exclamation mark per page!

Hyphens

Use hyphens to form compound modifiers: two words that combine to modify or describe the noun that follows.

  • Yes: This is a high-risk order. This order is high risk.
  • No: This is a high risk order. This order is high-risk.

Most prefixes do not require hyphens for clarity. Hyphens should only be used when omitting them would lead to confusion or ambiguity, such as when two vowels are adjacent. Consult a modern dictionary to be sure.

  • Yes: Re-order. Resend
  • No: Reorder. Reenable. Re-send

Quotes

Use double quotes (“”) for direct quotes. For UI elements, page titles, and other objects, use bold or italicized text as appropriate.

Use curly quotes in any UI or body copy unless you’re writing in code or there is a semantic reason to use straight quotes. To create curly quotation marks, use option+[ for opening and option+shift+[ for closing quotation marks on a Mac.

Usage

Abbreviations

Avoid internal abbreviations in customer-facing copy. Avoid apostrophes for plural abbreviations. Avoid i.e. or e.g. They are not localization friendly.

  • Yes: Tables, figures, and listings
  • No: TFL’s

Contractions

Avoid contractions. Many organizations encourage using contractions as they make content more conversational. We are mainly concerned with usability. Some types of contractions cause issues.

Following this helps people with:

  • time pressures: when reading quickly, it’s easy to misunderstand
  • stress: high anxiety levels make it harder to comprehend things
  • multi-tasking: when distracted, you might misread things
  • cognitive impairments: spelled-out words are less of a strain

[Digital.govt.nz (2022)](https://www.digital.govt.nz/standards-and-guidance/design-and-ux/content-design-guidance/grammar-and-punctuation/ ) tells us written contractions can be harder for people who:

  • have cognitive or intellectual impairments
  • have low literacy
  • have English as a second language
  • are Deaf (because English may be a second language).

1. Avoid negative contractions.####

Like shouldn’t, can’t and don’t. Research shows that many users:

  • find negative contractions difficult to read
  • misread them as the opposite of what they say

2. Simple positive contractions may be fine.####

Like: you’ll, we’ll, we’re, they’re, it’s, I’ll, they’ll, there’s.

Research shows that some users saw

  • I’ll as ill
  • we’ll as well

3. Possessive nouns, which are read in a similar way to contractions, may be fine.####

Like “my organization’s ethos”, “your cat’s tail”, “the suitcase’s weight”. There’s no usability evidence against possessive nouns at the moment.

While we’re here, use “its”, without an apostrophe, for possessive nouns. For example “its ethos”. And “it’s”, with an apostrophe, to shorten “it is”. For example “it’s sunny”. That’s not a readability guideline, just a grammar point.

4. Avoid conditional contractions.####

Examples: should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.

People with cognitive challenges or a low literacy level find less often used, complex tense contractions like these hard to recognize and understand.

Numbers

Write out numbers one through ten. After ten, you can use 11, 12, 108, and so on.

Pronouns

In most cases, second person is best. It fits Certara’s casual, conversational tone to refer to the reader directly with you.

Not sure whether it’s My projects or Your projects? For best results, avoid using mine, my, or your in UI copy.

If you need to use mine, my, or your, the rule of thumb is to think of the UI as a conversation between the system and the user.

If the system is presenting information to the user, such as in a dialog box, then your is more appropriate because it’s like saying, “Here are your things”, or “What would you like to do?” If the user is performing an action, such as clicking a button or a link, then mine/my is more appropriate because it’s like saying, “Show me my stuff!”

  • Yes: Certara will change your life.
  • Yes: Your team will love using change requests in Enterprise.
  • No: Teams love using change requests in Enterprise.

Gender

When possible, avoid gendered pronouns. If you can’t, then they or their is preferable to his or her or he or she.

  • Yes: Ask your admin to add you.
  • Yes: Ask your admin if they can add you.
  • No: Ask your admin if he or she can add you.

One word or two?

Can’t remember if it’s dataset or data set? Check out our Vocabulary.

Only

Put “only” directly before the word it modifies.

  • Yes: It might be only a bug.
  • No: It might only be a bug.

Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.

  • Yes: “We have big things planned for the coming year,” said Mike and Scott.
  • Yes: He called quokkas “the cutest animal ever.”
  • No: Add a comment to the “Data package” page.
  • No: The shark said “Surfers are delicious”.