The Marketing team promotes WordPress to current and future users and contributors. We create and amplify campaigns to support the growth of the WordPress project.
Our work is tracked on the Marketing Tasks Board on the WordPress organization’s GitHub. If you are planning a Marketing Table at a Contributor Event, please let us know in the Slack channel.
You can be part of the #marketing channel on Slack. Join our next Weekly Marketing Chat at: Tuesday 15:00 UTC.
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Howdy! If you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in contributing to the marketing and communications efforts of the WordPress open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project. Welcome, and thanks for getting involved.
Consider this your field guide to feeling comfortable writing in the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ brand voice. It’s also your reference point for the details that can help keep WordPress.org marketing and communications content consistent and engaging.
This guide is based on research gathered by observing how the brand has already been communicating, alongside discussions with Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy and other influential contributors within the WordPress community.
While this guide can be helpful for writing posts for Make Team blogs, its primary focus is on content for marketing and communications channels like:
This is a living document meant to adapt as the brand continues to grow and change. Save the link to quickly reference this guide as you need it. The Marketing Team will make every effort to keep it up to date (and can always use help to keep this guide updated).
For the WordPress brand visual identity and guidelines, visit the WordPress Design Library in Figma for the most up-to-date information.
For the Marketing Team visual identity, icons, and graphic assets, visit the Marketing Team Visual Identity page.
A brand’s voice is an expression of its personality and values. It’s the way a brand defines its relationship with others; how it presents itself to the world. The WordPress.org brand voice has evolved over its lifetime. Originally modeled after co-founder Matt Mullenweg, it’s now more reflective of the project’s global reach and impact.
To effectively write in the WordPress brand voice, it’s important to consider the words you choose, and the way you want people to feel when they engage with your content.
This is how the WordPress brand voice can be described:
| Friendly | Show kindness. Be open and welcoming. Let your audience feel invited into the conversation. |
| Empowering | Be helpful and willing to meet your audience where they are. Help them feel confident, capable, and supported. |
| Clear | Leave jargon, technical speak, and fancy words behind. Keep sentences short. Use abbreviations or acronyms that are universally understood. Let your audience understand your point as quickly and effortlessly as possible. |
| Inclusive | Write for everyone: across cultures, experiences, and identities. Help your audience feel included with language that doesn’t depend on cultural context. Be mindful of using expressions that are difficult to translate, or aren’t globally recognized. Humor, in particular, is best avoided as it’s often regional. |
| Composed | Be calm and confident. Write as a reliable source. Be moderate in how you express emotion in your writing. Bring things back to neutral where needed. |
| Charming* | Where appropriate, find points of delight and accessible playfulness. Remember: you can be engaging without depending entirely on humor. *This attribute is secondary and should be used sparingly. |
For examples of the voice in action, consider reading the following content from across the project:
The general tone for WordPress brand writing will have the following characteristics:
Write like you’re having a comfortable conversation with someone you’ve met before. There’s a level of familiarity, but you’re still trying to leave a good impression.
💡 Quick tip: Choose words that are easy to understand for a general, non-technical audience. Aim for short, simple sentences.
Compare these examples:
| Casual/informal | It’s easy to experiment with your site’s design when you’re using blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. themes. |
| Formal | It is simple to experiment with designs for your website when you are utilizing block themes. |
Be factual and clear by using solution-oriented language. Positivity brings your audience along with you and adds warmth to your writing.
💡 Quick tips:
Compare these examples:
| Neutral + positive | The WordPress open source project has evolved progressively over time—supported by skilled, enthusiastic developers, designers, scientists, bloggers, and more. |
| Neutral | The WordPress open source project has changed over time—with work done by developers, designers, scientists, bloggers, and more. |
| Neutral + negative | The WordPress open source project wouldn’t have had such a progressive evolution without the help of developers, designers, scientists, bloggers, and more. |
💡 Quick tip: Think about who you’re writing for (audience) and where it will appear (medium). The tone can be a little flexible based on context. For example, a press release for a developer-focused publication will have a slightly different tone than a social post from an official WordPress account. The voice, however, should be carried through everywhere.
There are a few important things to remember when writing about (and on behalf of) WordPress:
The WordPress project and software use various everyday terms to describe features and functionality. While writing, whether or not these terms are capitalized depends on whether they are used abstractly or concretely.
Capitalize terms when they are used abstractly. Ask yourself, “Am I referring to a WordPress feature or underlying concept?” If yes, capitalize. Examples:
| WordPress 5.5 introduced Patterns. | This statement refers to the Patterns feature itself, a set of functionality. |
| You’ll love the new Block options in WordPress 6.3. | Block is capitalized because it refers to the larger feature set of Blocks. |
| Block themes let you access your site’s Styles. | Here, Styles refers to the Styles feature or interface. |
Do not capitalize terms when used concretely. Ask yourself, “Am I referring to a specific clickable element that users can interact with?” Examples:
| I copied Mel’s pattern. | The pattern here refers to a specific, clickable object. |
| If there is an error in your block, you can attempt recovery. | This refers to a specific instance of a block, your block, so block is not capitalized. |
| The styles you set from within the Styles interface impact your entire site. | Both concrete and abstract uses of a term can appear in the same sentence. Here, the first instance of styles refers to a specific set, and the second refers to the broader feature interface. |
Compound terms and exceptions
When using WordPress terms together, consider whether each term is being used abstractly or concretely. Example:
| WordPress 6.3 introduces the Footnotes block. | In this case, Footnotes is a type or characteristic (I.e. intangible aspect) of the block, which is the clickable, movable, and interactable thing. Footnotes is used abstractly and therefore capitalized, while block, used concretely, is not. |
Some terms, such as Site Editor and Full Site Editing, may only be used abstractly. Example:
| We’ve added new features to the Site Editor. | Site Editor refers to a singular set of both intangible concepts and tangible functionality. As such, it is always capitalized. |
Normal rules for titles and names apply. Example:
| I submitted my pattern to the Pattern Directory. | While Pattern may be a abstract characteristic of Directory, similar to Footnotes block example, in this case the statement is referring to the aptly named Pattern Directory and is therefore capitalized. |
💡 Quick tip: When in doubt, keep terms in lowercase, which makes editing documents just a little bit easier and more consistent.
Writing in English comes with lots of different rules and expectations. It can be challenging even for someone who is extremely comfortable with the language. There’s a lot to remember.
Fortunately, this section will cover the most common and important notes about grammar, style, and formatting when writing on behalf of WordPress. (After all, you probably have more important things to commit to memory.)
Note: WordPress style is based on the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS). Unless specified in this guide, use the CMOS for reference.
Examples:
| Active voice | Download WordPress now. |
| Passive voice | WordPress can be downloaded now. |
| Active voice | Let’s shape the future of the web. |
| Passive voice | The future of the web can be shaped by us. |
Example:
| Do | The WordPress Photo Directory is a great place to discover free, high-quality photos contributed by the community. You too can help grow this project! Empower other creators by sharing your own images. |
| Avoid | The WordPress Photo Directory is a great place! You can discover free, high-quality photos contributed by the community! You too can help grow this project! Share your own images and empower other creators! |
| Sentence case | One platform, millions of possibilities |
| Title case | One Platform, Millions of Possibilities |
💡 Quick tip: Headlines phrased as questions that need the question mark for clarity are an exception.
Example:
You’ve got WordPress. What’s next?
Lists can be full sentences or fragments; just be consistent in syntax and punctuation.
Keep ordered content (e.g., steps or directions) in numbered lists; otherwise use a bulleted one.
Compare these examples:
These guidelines are meant for the WordPress.org website. For individual Make Team blogs, refer to that team’s handbook for guidelines.
Compare these examples:
| Descriptive links | Take part in this release by helping to test key features or translating WordPress. Find out more about getting involved in the Community Handbook. |
| Non-descriptive links | Take part in this release by helping to test key features or translating WordPress. Find out more about getting involved in the Community Handbook. Click here to read it. |
This is the main source of WordPress news and product updates. It lives on the WordPress.org website.
Main headlines (titles) are title case without final punctuation.
This is an exception to the general formatting recommendation for consistency across older and future /News posts.
Guidelines:
Examples:
While the WordPress brand voice and tone should always be present in your writing, here are some extra considerations for social platforms:
The following resources are meant to help expand on what’s included here, offer additional perspectives from around the project, or are tools you can use to finesse your writing.
Hopefully, you’ve found everything you need to get started writing on behalf of WordPress.org.
If you have questions, thoughts, or suggestions related to this writing guide, bring them forward in the #marketing channel. Or open a GitHub issue in the Marketing repository, referencing “Brand Writing Guide Update:” in the title, and add the “Documentation” tag.
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