LilyPond Contributor's Guide: 5.4.5 Technical writing style

### 5.4.5 Technical writing style

These refer to the NR. The LM uses a more gentle, colloquial style.

- Do not refer to LilyPond in the text. The reader knows what the manual is about. If you do, capitalization is LilyPond.
- If you explicitly refer to ‘lilypond’ the program (or any other command to be executed), write `@command{lilypond}`.
- Do not explicitly refer to the reader/user. There is no one else besides the reader and the writer.
- Avoid contractions (don’t, won’t, etc.). Spell the words out completely.
- Avoid abbreviations, except for commonly used abbreviations of foreign language terms such as etc. and i.e.
- Avoid fluff (“Notice that,” “as you can see,” “Currently,”).
- The use of the word ‘illegal’ is inappropriate in most cases. Say ‘invalid’ instead.

#### LilyPond — Contributor’s Guide