Colocation America Style Guide

Welcome to the Colocation America Style Station. The point of this page is to encourage our authors to follow the style standards and principles followed by the Colocation America staff. This makes a world of difference for a much more professional look and feel!

How It Works

The Colocation America team has been hard at work perfecting and coming up with these silly rules to perfect our medium. Our Style Guide is comprised of three sections which serve different functions:
  • Colocation America Basics
  • Style Standard Clearinghouse
  • Data Center Usage Dictionary
While the list is not comprehensive, it works. But we are open-minded! If you find any errors or would like to contribute just use the contact form at the bottom of the page to send "Updates and Inquiries." The Purpose: Even though our editorial team copy-edits and proofreads each submission for spelling, grammar, and formatting, the whole process is much better when the author has made the effort to adhere to Colocation America's style. Not only does that effort not go unnoticed to our team, it shows that you take great care in your work—and we appreciate that!

Colocation America Basics

Are you used to another media outlet's style? Don't assume those rules apply here—Colocation America's Style Guide is here to get you caught up with the unique style of our blog. Please pay particular attention to:

Numbers

  • Numbers zero through nine (and subsequently, first through ninth) are spelled out unless otherwise noted in the Colocation America Standard Clearinghouse
  • Numbers 10 and above (and subsequently, 10th and above) are presented in digits unless otherwise noted in the Colocation America Standard Clearinghouse
  • Percentages are always presented in digits (even for numbers under 10) and are indicated by the word "percent" instead of the percent symbol (%).

Punctuation

  • Unspaced em-dashes (blah—blah) are standard in all dash situations. No en-dashes (–), double hyphens (--), or spaced em-dashes (blah — blah).
  • Quotation marks are double ("...") instead of single ('...')—except in headlines or quotes within quotes, where Colocation America style calls for single marks.
  • Serial commas are used in all situations. Remember, your heroes are your parents, Superman, and Wonder Woman. It would be weird (but not wholly unthinkable) that your heroes are your parents, Superman and Wonder Woman. (Kudos to you if that's the case.)
oxford comma

Photo Credit: theamericangenius.com

Formatting and Layout

  • All words in headlines are capitalized, with the exception of articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or), and prepositions of four or fewer letters (in, of, etc.). (Use titlecapitalization.com—check the radial related to the Chicago Manual of Style—and you can never go wrong!)
  • Quotations are introduced by their attributive original source (unless obtained via firsthand interview).
  • All images should be no more than 600 pixels wide (the height can vary). You can use various image resizers, or let it up to our editorial team (we're sticklers).

Colocation America Style Standard Clearinghouse

Now it's time for the fun stuff. The above was only the beginning. Beware of falling into the rabbit hole that is the Colocation America Style Standard Clearinghouse. Note that you can scroll through the list via the scrollbar, or you can use your operating system's "find" feature (commonly, Command-F for Mac, Ctrl-F on PC). If you don't see an embedded table, you can view the standalone copy right here.