Apple Style Guide, March 2024 Edition

Another terrific resource from Apple’s documentation team, also available as a PDF. Apple has long made its style guide publicly available, but I suspect many people aren’t aware of it. The previous edition was from 2022.

Worth noting though that this is Apple’s style bible, and while most of it is inarguably good advice, some of it is simply arbitrary. For example, Apple famously styles some of its product names without title-casing them: Mac mini, iPod nano, macOS, visionOS, watchOS, etc. That’s purely style though, not spelling, and my style — like most publications — is to capitalize proper names.

A new entry, some of the idiosyncrasies of which many of you have likely already noticed in Apple’s marketing and documentation:

Apple Vision Pro — Always use the full name. In general references, don’t use the with Apple Vision Pro. It’s OK to use another article or a possessive adjective: Adjust the fit of your Apple Vision Pro.

You put on and take off Apple Vision Pro. When you have it on, you’re wearing it.

Put on Apple Vision Pro and adjust the fit.
Don’t run while you’re wearing Apple Vision Pro.

In text, don’t write the name Apple Vision Pro by combining the  symbol with Vision Pro.

Correct: Get started with Apple Vision Pro.
Incorrect: Get started with Vision Pro.

Don’t refer to Apple Vision Pro as a headset. In most cases, use the product name; in content where the name is repeated frequently, you can use device.

Outside Cupertino, no one eschews the in front of Apple product names when doing so sounds natural, and everyone calls the Vision Pro a “headset”, because, well, it is a headset.

(I keep thinking that if it had come out in the 1990s, it might have been named AppleVision Pro, closed-up and camel-cased, and also keep thinking that it kind of looks cool that way. Similarly: AppleWatch.)

★ Thursday, 21 March 2024