Style guidelines

The Jack Henry Design content guidelines focus on product- and platform-specific conventions and overrides. They are built upon the following style guides.

Priority of content style resources

Resource	What you'll find
Jack Henry Corporate Copy Style Guide	The Jack Henry Corporate Copy Style Guide covers specific grammatical and stylistic guidelines used throughout all internal and customer-facing Jack Henry publications. This resource is available upon request to Jack Henry employees only.
Chicago Manual of Style	The Chicago Manual of Style is a comprehensive style guide that covers a breadth of grammatical and editorial guidelines. It is available online with a paid subscription or can be purchased as a hardcover book.
Microsoft Manual of Style	The Microsoft Manual of Style is a comprehensive style guide with greater focus on writing for computer technology. These guidelines are available for free online.

Grammar and usage

Plurals

Do not use (s) or /s to demonstrate that the referred item could be plural. If you need to specify there may be one or multiple items, use the phrase “one or more” for clarity.

Pronouns

Use second-person pronouns (you, your) to help promote our overall tone in your content.

Avoid using the plural pronoun "they" to refer to a singular noun unless it is the only feasible option or if that is the preferred pronoun of a specific individual being referenced.

Do not use artificial genderless pronouns such as he/she, s/he or (wo)man.

Refer to the Jack Henry Corporate Copy Style Guide and The Chicago Manual of Style for additional techniques regarding pronoun usage.

Contractions

Use contractions to keep content conversational and improve the flow—especially when affirming users. Do not use contractions when writing negatives. This may create confusion and reduce clarity; write the full words instead.

Active and passive voice

Active voice is when the subject performs the action of the verb. Passive voice is when the subject receives the action.

Use the active voice as a general rule for your writing. Writing actively will promote a more direct message and typically encourage conciseness.

However, it is sometimes necessary or may sound more natural to write in the passive voice, particularly when the subject is somewhat ambiguous. You should feel free to write passively in these situations, but treat it as more of the exception rather than the rule.

Punctuation and symbols

Commas

Use Oxford, or serial, commas when writing lists.

Commas should also be used in numbers with more than three digits for clarity.

Exclamation points

Only use exclamation points in positive moments of excitement or success, but do not overuse them. Never use multiple exclamation points.

Do not use exclamation points for alerts.

Ampersands

Write the full word “and” instead of using an ampersand. The exception to this is when the ampersand is an official part of a company or product name (e.g., AT&T).

Ellipses

Use an ellipsis when showing something is in progress or when the user is expected to wait while the system completes an action.

An ellipsis should also be used when text is truncated. When a text is truncated, the full text should appear in a tooltip on hover when possible.

Numbers

General principle

Write out numbers from zero to nine. If the number is greater than nine, use numerals.

Money

Amounts

Use a dollar sign and decimal point when denoting currency. Include a comma for numbers over three digits.

Don't superscript the dollar or cents sign.

Cash deposit

Prefix deposits into a cash account with a plus-sign (+).

Don't bold the text.

Cash debit

Don't use a minus-sign (-) to prefix a debit within a cash account.

Credit and loan deposit

Use a minus-sign (-) to signify a deposit within a credit or loan account.

Dates

Used in headlines

Spell out the full day of the week and use a three-character abbreviation for the month. Don't include a period after the month abbreviation.

Don't include ordinal indicators such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.

Spell out the full month and include the four-digit year when there is no day of the week present.

Used as supporting information

Use a forward slash to separate the month, day, and year. Don't use hyphens.

Don't include a 0 before numbers less than 10.

Used in sentences

Spell out the full month. Don't use abbreviations.

Include the four-digit year to clarify spans of time or reduce ambiguity.

Time of day

Use numbers when referring to time in text. Time should correspond with the user’s regional and format preferences (12-hour or 24-hour clock) In a 12-hour clock format, we write a.m. (ante meridiem) and p.m. (post meridiem).

Specific time

Format time with a colon followed by the minutes, even if it's on the hour. When using 12-hour time, always format a.m. and p.m. using lowercase letters and periods. Put a space between the numerals and the a.m. or p.m.

When using 24-hour time, the a.m. and p.m. designations are redundant and therefore should not be included.

Morning hours represented in 24-hour time should include the preceding zero.

Time range

Ranges of time should be indicated with a hyphen and adjacent spaces. Don't use the word "to."

Calendar time

Use a relative time designation when representing date and time within two weeks of the creation date.

Use in both past and future tense.

Spell out the full day of the week.

Last updated time increments

Time increment labels should display the plural label when appropriate. Do not graphically or textually indicate the number of seconds the account was last updated.

Patterns for formatting relative times

Last updated time	Format
Less than five minutes	Just updated
Less than 10 minutes	5 mins ago
Less than 15 minutes	10 mins ago
Less than 30 minutes	15 mins ago
Less than 60 minutes	30 mins ago
Less than 24 hours	# hr[s] ago
Less than one week	# day[s] ago
Less than one month	# week[s] ago
Less than one year	# month[s] ago
Greater than or equal to one year	# year[s] ago

Telephone numbers

Use parentheses around the three-digit area code. The seven-digit number is separated by a hyphen. Don't use periods or other forms of punctuation as separators.

When writing phone numbers for an international audience, use spaces as separators. Avoid using parentheses with international numbers as their usage varies widely across countries.

Account numbers

Use a lowercase "x" followed by the last four digits of the account number. Don't put a space between the "x" and the numbers.

Use parentheses when the account number is used inline with the account name.

Status messaging

Always use numerals in status messages, regardless of how many digits the number has.

All other messaging should follow our general principle.

Abbreviations

Jack Henry products

Use the full name of Jack Henry products when referencing them in writing.

You may use a shortened name if one has been specifically approved for use in marketing and communication materials. In this case, you should use the full name upon first use and the shortened version upon subsequent uses.

Referencing figure

Use the abbreviation “e.g.” (exempli gratia) for figure given in placeholders and in other places throughout the product. The “e” in “e.g.” is capitalized if it’s placed at the beginning of a sentence. We do not use the simplified abbreviation “ex.” (example) or “i.e.” (Id est - in other words).

Capitalization

We prefer to follow the Chicago Manual of Style's preference for the sparing use of capitals. The following guidelines highlight situations where capitalization should be handled in a specific way.

Sentence-style capitalization

Use sentence—style capitalization for all user interface text. This reinforces a more conversational tone and eliminates the need to remember which words need to be capitalized as is necessary with headline-style capitalization.

All caps

Avoid using all caps. Emphasis should be created using formatting methods such as bold or italics (but not both) instead of capitalization so as not to seem aggressive to the user. An exception to this is if data or other content is already provided in all caps and cannot reasonably be restyled using sentence-style capitalization.

Capitalizing proper nouns

Always capitalize proper nouns unless the rules are intentionally being broken for stylistic effect (e.g., iPhone). When in doubt, consult a company or product website to determine the preferred formatting for in-copy use.

For words that can either act as a common or proper noun, carefully consider the context and capitalize accordingly.

Job and position titles

As a general rule, we prefer to capitalize job and position titles when they directly refer to a person's name. When the title is used as a general reference, it should be in lowercase.

Capitalizing abbreviations

Use all capitals with no periods for initialisms and acronyms.

Do not capitalize a spelled-out version of the initialism or acronym unless it is a proper noun.

For all other abbreviations such as titles and addresses, consult a dictionary for the preferred format.

User interface elements

Use the same capitalization as used in the user interface. For example, if a button has the label "Update" (formatted with a capital "U"), you might write, "Click the Update button to apply changes to the user profile."