Editorial style guide

To find answers for particular stylistic questions, including punctuation, capitalization, and spelling, please check the Autodesk Editorial Style Guide. It’s your main resource for all customer-facing content—from marketing campaigns to support articles and learning content.

For style issues not covered here, refer to The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition. For spelling, capitalization, and hyphenation not covered in this document, use the first-listed spelling on Merriam-Webster Online.

Here’s a quick reference that covers the most common style questions we get.

All caps

Don’t use all caps in headlines. It is difficult to read and creates a poor user experience.

Bulleted lists

  • Use parallel construction when possible.
  • Use end punctuation if an item is a complete sentence.
  • Don’t use end punctuation if all items in a list are fragments. However, use end punctuation for all items if you are mixing fragments and complete sentences. In other words: If one item needs a period, then all items should end with periods.
  • Capitalize only the first word after the bullet.
  • Consider bold text for introductory phrases.

Em dash

The em dash—which signifies emphasis or a break in thought—should not have spaces on either side. Do not make an em dash with two hyphens.

Product names and trademarks

For editorial guidelines, see product name usage and trademarks. For detailed legal guidelines, see current product names with trademarks. A complete list of current product names with correct trademark symbol usage is available on our legal information page.

Serial (Oxford) comma

Use a comma before “and” in a series: red, white, and blue.

Sentence-style capitalization

Most packaging, collateral, and the autodesk.com website use sentence-style capitalization. Sentence style (sentence case) means that only the first letter of the first word and all proper nouns are capitalized. In other words, capitalize the text as if it were a sentence. (Exceptions: industry names and browser titles on the website.)

Autodesk product names and branding terms (such as Digital Prototyping and Building Information Modeling) are always capped in copy as well as in headlines and subheads.

Do not use ending punctuation unless there is more than one sentence in a headline or subhead.