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On September 25th, 2024, we released v2 of the Apps SDK. To learn what’s new and how to upgrade, see Migration FAQ and Migration guide.
Design guidelines
Design guidelines

Written content

Guidelines for great written content.

Be concise

Use short sentences and simple words. Avoid unnecessary modifiers, such as "quite," "very," and "really."

Use US spelling

For example:

  • "realize," not "realise"
  • "colors," not "colours"
  • "center," not "centre"

Use sentence case

Use sentence case for all UI written content, including paragraphs, buttons, headings, and labels.

Sentence case capitalizes proper nouns and the first letter of the first word in a sentence.

For example, this is sentence case:

Biscuit the dog and his quest for treats

This, by contrast, is title case:

Biscuit the Dog and His Quest for Treats

Use second-person perspective

For example: "All your designs", not "All my designs".

Common file extensions

When referring generally to a file extension type, use all uppercase without a period.

For example:

  • GIF
  • PDF
  • HTML
  • JPEG

URLs

Generally speaking, avoid spelling out URLs. For example, prefer "Canva" rather than "canva.com".

If you need to spell out the URL, leave off the "http://www⁠(opens in a new tab or window)". For example, "canva.com", not "http://www.canva.com⁠(opens in a new tab or window)".