Punctuation
How to use punctuation at Zendesk.
- Ampersand
- Apostrophe
- Colon
- Comma
- Ellipse
- Exclamation point
- Hyphens and dashes
- Parentheses
- Period
- Quotation mark
- Semi-colon
- Slash
Ampersand
Avoid ampersands in place of “and.” Don’t use “+” unless you’re opening a coffee shop in Portland.
Apostrophe
Use apostrophes to denote possession. Avoid apostrophes to denote plurals even for initialisms.
Colon
In general, avoid using colons in product, especially when describing some attribute and its value. Use emphasis styling instead to distinguish between these two types of content.
It is OK to use a colon to introduce a bulleted list. When doing so, make sure you don’t split a sentence at the colon. This causes challenges for translation.
Name Omar Bongo
Name: Omar Bongo
Comma
Always use the Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, to precede the final item in a list. Don’t use commas in buttons.
Ellipse
Garden creates ellipses automatically when words are truncated. Don’t add them manually to the UI.
Exclamation point
These are too loud for most of our brand tones. We tend not to use them at all.
Hyphens and dashes
Err on the side of fewer hyphens and dashes. Use en dashes with no spaces to communicate a range. Avoid using en or em dashes to communicate a break in your thoughts.
This plan affects any customers with 100–150 active agents.
Parentheses
Use sparingly. Use parentheses to introduce an acronym in product and never put crucial information in parentheses.
Period
Use periods to end full sentences in body copy. Consult this handy chart to find out where we use periods.
| Component | Does it need a period? |
|---|---|
| Breadcrumbs | No |
| Bullets (in a list) | No. Bullets should be sentence fragments. If a bullet has more than one sentence, use closing punctuation on each. If a bullet has more than two sentences, it should be a description instead. |
| Button | No |
| Description | Yes, at the end of every full sentence. |
| Empty state | Yes, at the end of every full sentence. |
| Headings and subheadings | No |
| Labels | No |
| System messages | No, unless it’s more than one sentence. |
| Title | No |
| Tooltip | No, unless it’s more than one sentence. |
Quotation mark
Avoid using quote marks to indicate places and features in the UI. Use bold instead.
Use the End chat button to end a conversation.
Use the “End chat” button to end a conversation.
Semi-colon
No semi-colons in product; that’s the way it has to be.
Slash
Used when indicating URLs and as a date separator. You can also use slashes to mean “per,” but limit use to one slash in a phrase, for example: “$9/agent per month.”