Document Conventions

Our documents use certain types of document conventions to help you distinguish source code from language elements, from keyboard sequences, and so on. The following table clarifies the conventions used across Office developer documentation and calls out exceptions by product.

Table 1. Typographic conventions that apply across all Office developer products and technologies

Convention Description Example

Monospace Indicates source code, code examples, input to the command line, application output, code lines embedded in text, and variables and code elements. Public Class

Bold Indicates most predefined programming elements, including namespaces, classes, delegates, objects, interfaces, methods, functions, macros, structures, constructors, properties, events, enumerations, fields, operators, statements, directives, data types, keywords, exceptions, non-HTML attributes, and configuration tags, as well as registry keys, subkeys, and values. Also indicates the following HTML elements: attributes (lower case), directives, keywords, values, and headers. In addition, indicates required user input, including command-line options, that must be entered exactly as shown. Lastly, indicates XML element names and XML attribute names (which are typed as written in the XSD). Path class
Resolve method
href attribute
snippets element
keyword attribute

Italic Indicates placeholders, most often method or function parameters and HTML placeholders; these placeholders represent information that must be supplied by the implementation or the user. For command-line input, indicates parameter values. context parameter

Capital letters Indicates the names of keys and key sequences. Also indicates HTML element names ENTER
CTRL+R
HTML element

Plus sign Indicates a combination of keys. For example, ALT+F1 means to hold down the ALT key while pressing the F1 key. ALT+F1