We use two fonts in our technical writing: a sans serif font that we call normal font, and a monospace (fixed-width) font that we call tech font.
The tech font makes technical terms stand out to the reader when they appear in and out of quoted code. In general, it is used for terms and programs as they appear behind the scenes (e.g., in code or a command line) and within the infrastructure of a system. Terms that use normal font are often only seen on user-friendly, front-end interfaces and in marketing materials. Here are examples of each font in use:
| Normal Font | Tech Font |
|---|---|
| Titles of documents and file types Bishop Fox Security Style Guide, a PDF file | Full names of files and file extensionsSecurity_Style_Guide.pdf, “a .exe file” |
| Error messages and security questions “Please enter a valid user ID.” | File pathsserver/web/directory/ |
| Names of organizations, companies, teams, and vulnerabilities DEF CON, .NET, Tor, EternalBlue | Email addresses, usernames, and passwords[email protected], @bishopfox, SYSTEM, admin:admin, password1 |
| Names of products and their versions Ethernet, Steam, Ubuntu 17.04 | Domain names and hostnamesbishopfox.com, DC01, EXAMPLENET |
| URIs, URNs, and URLs as clickable links https://www.bishopfox.com/resources/ | References to URIs, URNs, and URLsdata:, www.bishopfox.com/[variable] |
| Types of fields, headers, parameters, etc. data element, content-type header, the Forgot Password field | Names of fields, headers, parameters, etc.C: drive, X-Forwarded-For header, Secure flag, url parameter |
| Descriptions of groups or roles administrator, “role allowing read/write access” | Names of groups or rolesDomain Admins, Enterprise Admins |
| Types of requests GET request, pull request, PUT request | Characters or elements from code “Disallow wildcards [ * ]”, “the getID() function” |
| Line numbers and ports by themselves “On line 42 of the code…”, port 80, port 443 | IP addresses (with or without ports)192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.1:80 |
| Reference numbers, standards, and vuln IDs CVE-2014-6271, MS15-034, RFC 1149, 802.11r | Code excerpts<b>Hello World!</b>3. Go to 1 |
Terms that use the tech font appear in that style everywhere in documents outside of headings (including bullet points and figure captions).
When writing about clickable elements, we follow the Microsoft Writing Style Guide (see Appendix B). We bold button names that the reader is meant to click. When writing about a feature with the same name as a button, capitalize it if applicable, but don’t bold it.
Within the word list in this style guide, bolding indicates terms that have their own entries.
In this guide, we highlight software and tool names with unintuitive capitalization, spelling, or formatting. However, as new tools are always being created, here is some general guidance around how to style this kind of technical name.
Software names should usually be written in normal font, but the following exceptions require tech font for clarity:
Operating system commands and other command-line tools that are styled in tech font in their official documentation
Ex: chattr, sudo
Lowercase names that look like regular words
Ex: ping
Maintain the software’s original capitalization to avoid any confusion.
If a term can be used as both a name and a command, spelling and styling may vary, so check how it is used in the specific instance.
Ex: Bash vs. bash, SCP vs. scp
cyber.dic is an auxiliary spellcheck dictionary that can be added to your word processor to augment its standard spellcheck list. This is a resource for anyone who regularly writes about tech and is not a fan of the red underline that plagues any highly technical document.
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