pproenca Human Copywrite
Editorial style and usage guidance distilled from the Apple Style Guide (June 2025). Use it whenever you're producing text a human will read.
When to Apply
Trigger this skill whenever the output is text a human will read. Specifically:
- UI strings & error messages — button labels, dialog text, empty states, onboarding copy. Voice and UI-vocabulary rules apply.
- User-facing documentation — help articles, READMEs, onboarding guides, tutorials. All rules apply.
- Developer documentation — API references, SDK guides, code comments meant for humans. Add the technical-notation rules.
- Marketing copy — feature announcements, landing pages, release notes. Voice, capitalization, and product-name rules are load-bearing.
- Localized content — anything that will be translated. The international-style rules become primary.
- Writing about Apple platforms — even if the surrounding product isn't an Apple product, refer to Apple hardware/software by Apple's preferred forms (iPhone, iPad, macOS, App Store).
If the user is writing code with no user-facing strings, skip this skill. If they're writing a function name or variable, that's not copywriting — that's naming, which lives elsewhere.
Core Principles
These run through every section. When in doubt, fall back on them.
- Active voice, present tense, second person. You can connect your iPhone to a Mac. Not Your iPhone may be connected to a Mac.
- Specific over generic. Choose File > Save. Not Use the menu to save the file.
- Plain words over jargon. Turn on over activate. Log in over authenticate (unless authenticate is technically precise).
- Don't make the product the subject of an action the user takes. You can create a database with FileMaker Pro. Not FileMaker Pro allows you to create a database.
- Items appear on screen — they don't display. The setup assistant appears. Not The setup assistant is displayed.
- Don't restate what code does — say why. Applies to code comments.
- Respect product names verbatim. AirPods (not Airpods), iCloud (not iCloud+ unless you mean the paid tier), Apple Pencil (not the Apple pencil).
- Numbers ≥10 stay digits; <10 spell out — but with many exceptions (numbers-and-dates.md).
- Compound modifiers preceding a noun are hyphenated; following the verb they're not — user-friendly app, the app is user friendly.
- In code, never use a function name as a verb. Run
lson both directories — notlsboth directories.
How to Use
Always read this SKILL.md first, then load the topic file(s) relevant to the current task. For one-off term lookups, jump to references/a-z-lookup.md and follow its pointer to the topic file.
Topic files
| File | When to read |
|---|---|
| voice-and-tone.md | Any user-facing prose. Most copy decisions live here. |
| punctuation.md | Deciding on em dashes, en dashes, ellipses, commas, colons, apostrophes, quotes. |
| capitalization.md | Writing headings, titles, button labels, or proper-noun-adjacent terms. |
| hyphenation-and-compounds.md | Compound modifiers, e- and re- prefixes, user-friendly vs user friendly. |
| numbers-and-dates.md | Writing dates, times, ranges, ordinals, percentages, fractions, decades, 2D, 4K, 24/7. |
| units-of-measure.md | Quoting GB, MHz, mm, inches, etc. Full SI unit/symbol table. |
| word-choice-and-confusables.md | Pairs like affect/effect, backup/back up, login/log in, OK, email, online. |
| abbreviations-and-acronyms.md | When to spell out, file types, plurals, articles. Includes industry acronyms (URL, ISP, JPEG, etc.). |
| ui-elements.md | Vocabulary for buttons, menus, sheets, popovers, sidebars, controls. |
| apple-products.md | Apple hardware names: iPhone, iPad, Mac, MacBook, Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Pencil, etc. |
| apple-features-software.md | macOS, iOS, iCloud, Apple Music, Siri, AirDrop, Apple Intelligence, Genmoji, and all Apple software/services/features. |
| technical-notation.md | Developer documentation: code font, syntax descriptions, placeholders. |
| international-style.md | Localized or international content: ISO country/currency/language codes, ISO 8601 dates, telephone numbers. |
A-Z lookup
For a single term ("How do I write backup vs back up?"), open references/a-z-lookup.md and follow the pointer to the topic file with that entry.
Gotchas
See gotchas.md. One scope note worth knowing up front: the source's "Writing inclusively" chapter (pronouns, person-first vs identity-first language, replacements for blacklist/whitelist and master/slave) was intentionally excluded from this skill at ingest time.
Source
Apple Style Guide, June 2025 (243 pages). Distilled and re-organized by topic for selective loading. Source content is preserved verbatim where reproduced. The web version of the guide is at https://support.apple.com/guide/applestyleguide/welcome/web.