[{
"type": "thumb-down",
"id": "missingTheInformationINeed",
"label":"Missing the information I need"
},{
"type": "thumb-down",
"id": "tooComplicatedTooManySteps",
"label":"Too complicated / too many steps"
},{
"type": "thumb-down",
"id": "outOfDate",
"label":"Out of date"
},{
"type": "thumb-down",
"id": "samplesCodeIssue",
"label":"Samples/Code issue"
},{
"type": "thumb-down",
"id": "otherDown",
"label":"Other"
}]
[{
"type": "thumb-up",
"id": "easyToUnderstand",
"label":"Easy to understand"
},{
"type": "thumb-up",
"id": "solvedMyProblem",
"label":"Solved my problem"
},{
"type": "thumb-up",
"id": "otherUp",
"label":"Other"
}]
What's new
Each week, we update this page with a summary of recent significant changes
to the style guide. If there haven't been any significant changes in a given
week, we don't publish an update.
April 26, 2021
New guidance or change
Page
Clarified guidance about when to create a custom anchor for a
heading.
When you describe navigating through menus using angle brackets, add an
aria-label
attribute to each angle bracket, for use by screen readers:
<span aria-label="and then">></span>.
On the Text-formatting summary
page, added guidance about using a variable to indicate a range of version
numbers, and clarified guidance about using <em>.
Added entries to the word list:
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), UTF.
On the Dates and times page, added
guidance about avoiding referring to seasons of the year.
In the word list, added more suggested
alternatives for master and slave.
July 27, 2020
Added entries to the word list:
grandfathered, graylist, greylist, multi-regional,
Unix epoch time. Expanded and clarified guidance for the
blacklist, master, and multi-region entries.
July 20, 2020
Reorganized and updated the Other editorial
resources page, and moved that page to near the top of the left nav.
On the Figures and other images page, added
links to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) resources.
On the Procedures page, added guidance
about introducing a procedure with an imperative.
Added entries to the word list:
bar, baz, canceled, foo, like, such
as.
As of this week, we've stopped including small-detail changes in this
page. For example, when we corrected a typo in the style guide in the past, we
used to mention that correction on this page, but we're no longer mentioning
minor changes that have no effect on guidance.
July 13, 2020
Renamed this summary-of-recent-changes page from "Release notes" to
"What's new," and moved it to near the top of the left nav.
In the Pronouns page, slightly updated the
guidance about using gender-neutral they.
June 29, 2020
On several pages, reorganized guidance about formatting code and
command lines. In particular:
Moved the guidance that was in a page about command-line terminology
to the Documenting command-line syntax page,
and deleted the separate command-line terminology page.
On the Writing inclusive
documentation page, added guidance about avoiding figurative language that
relates to the slaughter of animals.
June 1, 2020
On the Figures and other images page,
updated guidance about alt text, figure descriptions, and figure captions.
Reorganized the HTML and semantic
tagging page, and added guidance about not using the <br>
element to change visual presentation. Also replaced a broken link to a
third-party site.
On the Numbers page, added guidance about
avoiding using Roman numerals.
Added entries to the word list:
currently, dash, NoOps.
May 25, 2020
On the Numbers page, corrected two examples
to match our guidance.
On the Abbreviations page, added
guidance about use of the term acronym.
Added entries to the word list:
happiness, scale, service level agreement, service level
indicator, service level objective. Also clarified guidance for
app.
On the Procedures page, clarified the
guidance about stating the location of an action before stating the action.
Added entries to the word list:
config, extract, unarchive, uncompress,
untar. Also changed the guidance about ssh and related terms.
Also corrected a typo.
May 11, 2020
Major change: On the Code in text
page, changed guidance for placeholder styling. The new preferred style is
all-uppercase with underscore delimiters.
Also on the Code in text page,
corrected guidance about how to mark up placeholders with Markdown.
On the Units of measurement page,
added guidance about using per when referring to rates.
On the UI elements and interaction
page, clarified the distinction between text input and keyboard shortcuts, and
added guidance about when to use the <code> and
<kbd> elements. On the Code in
text page, added text input to the list of things to put in code font.
On the Accessible content page, added
a recommendation to use a screen reader to test your documentation. Also added
guidance about introducing tables.
On the Example domains and names page,
changed the recommended example company names to avoid camel case.
On the Code in text page and the Colons page, clarified and expanded guidance about how
to format a colon after text that's bold or in code font.
Added entries to the word list:
key, key ring, per, vice versa.
April 13, 2020
On the Lists page, expanded the guidance
about when not to use sentence-ending punctuation.
On the Link text page, added guidance
about abbreviations in link text.
On the Dates and times page, added
guidance about how to express time zones.
In the word list, clarified guidance
about key-value pair.
Added an entry to the word list:
personally identifiable information (PII).
March 30, 2020
On the Hyphens page, clarified guidance
about ranges of numbers.
In the UI elements and interaction
page, changed guidance for formatting input for text boxes to recommend using
the HTML <code> element instead of
<kbd>.
Removed outdated guidance about capitalization after a run-in heading.
For the current guidance, see "Description lists that use run-in headings" on
the Lists page.
Clarified guidance about avoiding all-uppercase and camel case.
Clarified guidance about avoiding lowercase at the start of a
sentence.
Clarified guidance about capitalization when referring to documents by
title in various contexts.
Expanded and reorganized the Code in
text page. In particular:
Expanded the guidance about documenting placeholders.
Expanded the list of items to put in code font.
On the Commas page, added guidance about
using a comma with because.
On the Dashes page, added guidance about not
using en dashes.
Added entries to the word list:
datastore, tutorial. Also added guidance (in the entry for
documentation) about phrases like in this document.
March 2, 2020
On the Capitalization page, added
guidance about using sentence case for labels and callouts.
On the Cross-references page,
added guidance about how to format the titles of web series.
On the Resources page, added links to the
Kubernetes glossary and the Kubernetes style guide.
On the Lists page, added guidance about how
and when to use a bulleted list with run-in headings.
Updated the word list to refer to
Google Cloud instead of GCP, in accord with a recent name change.
In particular, changed entries for GCP, GCP Console, and GCP
project ID to Google Cloud, Google Cloud Console, and
Google Cloud project ID, respectively.
Added an entry to the word list: GKE
node. Also updated guidance for GKE.
In the left nav, moved the word list and the product-names page to near
the top.
Added entries to the word list:
as, big-endian, google.dev, little-endian.
December 9, 2019
On the Tables page, added guidance about
sorting tables, and clarified guidance about when to use tables.
Reverted last week's changes about using earlier and
later instead of lower and higher; those changes need
further refining.
December 2, 2019
On the Cross-references
page, added guidance about using the word about in cross-references,
rather than on.
Added entries to the word list: about
versus on, for instance, SLA. Also changed guidance about
using earlier and later for a range of version numbers.
November 25, 2019
On the UI elements and interaction
page, added guidance about focusing on the task rather than on UI elements as
such.
On various pages, added cross-references linking to other pages.
Deleted the page about URLs in links, and moved the material that was on
that page to the cross-references
page. Also added some examples to that page.
Removed unnecessary explanations of the icons that indicate that a
guideline applies only in Android documentation or only in Google Cloud Platform
documentation.
Added a link to the C++ coding style guide, in the Coding style guides section.
September 4, 2017
Added several more terms to the word list:
check, checkbox, clear, deselect, open
source, select, target, uncheck, Unix-like,
unselect.
Added material to the Trademarks page
about using trademarks as adjectives. Also added links to a couple of other
trademark-related pages from Google.
Removed Android-specific material from the Headings page, to bring Android doc guidelines more
into line with non-Android guidelines. Also, added notes about things not to
include in headings.
Removed Android label from material on the Tables page, to make that material also apply to
non-Android docs.
