3D Touch
Apple’s term for pressure input on iPhone. On Apple Watch, it’s Force Touch.
3GS’s
Plural of 3GS. Long-ago style was “3GSes” but see: https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/disambiguating_iphone_model_names_that_have_the_s_suffix
9to5Mac
adapter
adviser
*Advisor* is an accepted spelling, but *adviser* is preferred, per both Garner and NYT. But: *advisory*. See Garner at *-er*.
artificiality
Seemingly preferred over *artificialness* despite *naturalness*, and my own ear.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artificial
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/artificiality
AirPort
à la / a la
Garner, 5th Ed: “This gallicism, meaning ‘in the manner or style of’, was borrowed into English in the late 1500s. [...] Generally, it is written without the DIACRITICAL MARK and without italics «he chipped in a la Tom Watson», unless it appears as part of a larger French phrase «steak *à la grecque*» «*pommes à la duchesse*».”
That's contrary to NYT style, Merriam-Webster, and New Oxford American, which all specify the diacritical: à la. Previous DF style: With accent, not italicized. See . As of December 2024, I'm reinstituting this. The accent gives a big helping hand to the reader's eye.
anti-alias
antisemitism
https://www.adl.org/spelling
Seems like new NYT style, as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/opinion/texas-synagogue-antisemitism.html
App Clip / app clip
"App Clip when referring to the feature in marketing and titles. App clip (and app clip) when used in sentence case."
AppKit
The Cocoa Application Kit
http://developer.apple.com/releasenotes/Cocoa/AppKit.html
Applebot
https://support.apple.com/en-us/119829
Apple event
lowercase ‘e’
AppleInsider
Apple Silicon
Apple's own style is not to capitalize "silicon", and until January 2025 I've been following that, but it seems wrong to me. Apple Silicon is their proprietary chip platform, especially related to their A- and M-series chips.
archrival
Cf. NYT Style Manual
arrow keys
Use lowercase in general references. Don’t use *direction keys*.
Capitalize the name of each arrow key:
Use the arrow keys to move the insertion point from cell to cell.
Press the Left Arrow key.
(From Apple Publications Style Guide.)
auto-completion
backdoor (n. and adj.)
A house still has a *back door*. A computer system may have (but of course shouldn't) have a *backdoor*. Prior to February 2025, DF style was "back door" for the noun no matter whether it was literal or figurative.
back end (n.)
back-end (adj.)
backup (n., adj.)
back up (verb phrase)
back-up (always wrong)
backward
bezel
The area surrounding the display on the front face of a device.
bitrate
BlackBerry
BlackBerrys.
blond
Per Garner: *blonde* is feminine, but “in AmE, *blond* is preferred in all senses.”
Blu-ray
lowercase ‘r’
Bluetooth
BitTorrents: see “titles”
Boot Camp
Businessweek
Used to be intercapped W, but Bloomberg has it lowercase now.
cancelled, cancelling, cancellation
Until February 2021, DF style followed Standard American English and
used single L’s: canceled/canceling (and traveled/traveling,
leveled/leveling). British English uses double L’s, which makes more
natural sense. My mnemonic was always that Americans are cheap and
wanted to save on the extra L’s. But The New Yorker style is
double-L, which is good enough for me as prior art. Thus DF style
prefers travelled/travelling, levelled/levelling. (It never sat
right with me that the Traveling Wilburys spelled their name that
way.) The New Yorker goes with *focusses* even.
capitalization of unusual names
From the NYT style guide, p. 78, Company and Corporation Names:
When a company name calls for unconventional capitalization,
heed any preference that requires up to three capitals in a
word. If the capitals exceed three, upper-and-lowercase the
name except for proper nouns that appear within it. Thus:
PepsiCo Inc., the BankAmerica Corporation, and the SmithKline
Beecham Corporation.
carveout (n.)
carve out (v.)
catercorner
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catercorner
cc, cc'd, cc'ing
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cc
chrissake
Chrome OS
click wheel
tappable scroll wheel on iPods
CNet News
They seem to want all-cap “CNET”, but forget about it.
CNNMoney
No space, no slash. As per: https://twitter.com/jack_regan/status/518032901884350465
Cocoa Touch
codename
The dictionaries say “code name” but they’re too slow.
colocation
American Heritage says “collocation” but that seems outdated, if not just
wrong.
commas
use a comma before “and”: this, that, and the other
conspiratorial
Garner labels conspirational, conspiratory, and conspirative as needless variants, and says ratio in print is a rather lopsided 264 : 2.4 : 1.9 : 1.w
Core Data
Cover Flow
Covid
I'm late to putting this change into this guide and into practice on DF (11 Jan 2025, backporting the change to posts from 2024), but much of the world has long moved on from treating "COVID" as an acronym (and it was always sort of a backronym cheat: "COrona VIrus Disease"). The New York Times and The Guardian have both long styled it with only an initial uppercase *C*. The New Yorker, Merriam-Webster, and MLA still go with all-caps.
daylight saving time
Mnemonic: there's only one "s" in "DST".
decades
Apostrophe only for the contraction: *the ’90s*. Prefer the full four-digit decade: the 1990s, the 2010s.
dialog/dialogue
*Dialog* for UI windows; *dialogue* for conversation.
dimension sign
Surround with spaces — 2 × 4 — per Bringhurst.
ditto (v.)
dittoed; dittoing; dittos
douchebag
downward
not downwards; see note at *upward*
driver’s license(s)
DRM-free
not “non-DRM”
du jour
French: “of the day”. *De jure* is Latin for “by law”.
https://linguix.com/english/common-mistake/de_jure_du_jour
Dynamic Island
Views: compact leading, compact trailing, minimal, and expanded.
e-book
earbuds
ellipses
Bringhurst, 4.0, p. 82:
i ... j
k....
l..., l
l,... l
m...?
n...!
Thus, when used sort of like an em-dash to indicate a pause between words ... put spaces on both sides.
email
emoji (singular and plural)
*Emojis* is accepted by dictionaries, but they list it second after *emoji*. The NYT has been inconsistent over the years, but has seemingly settled on *emojis* for the plural. The New Yorker has been equally inconsistent over the years, despite this 2013 piece (http://bit.ly/3GyCE2T) that even states: "'Emoji' comes from the Japanese word for pictograph, and is both singular and plural."
Notably, Emojipedia seems to consistently use *emojis*. For that reason (along with the Times and New Yorker seeming to trend, if incosistently, in that direction in recent years), I standardized DF style on *emojis* at some point in the early 2020s. As of this update (July 2025), however, I'm switching to *emoji*, with possible exceptions played only by ear (e.g. "a text message consisting of nothing but 10 middle finger emojis", perhaps). I went through the DF archive and there were only a few non-blockquote instances of "emojis", and changing all of them to "emoji" worked to my ear. Also, even when using "emojis" in the headline, without thinking about it I always used "emoji" in the URL slugs.
Esc/Escape
Apple Style Guide: Include the word *Escape* in parentheses on first occurrence. First occurrence: *Press the Esc (Escape) key.* Thereafter: *Press Esc.*
DF style: Just "Esc". Presume DF readers know it's "Escape".
Ethernet
FaceTime
FairPlay
farkakte
https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/162
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/16/crosswords/spelling-bee-diary-0711.html
https://nyti.ms/3TosqVw
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/joel-greys-open-book
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/martin-short-plays-bit-by-bit
filename
filesystem
Prior to February 2025, DF style was “file name”. It feels overdue to close these up. Apple Style Guide prefers “filename”, but “file system”. See: *pathname*.
Financial Times
They don't include "the" in the publication title.
Fitts’s Law
foreign words
http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=805685
https://web.archive.org/web/20080210032900/http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=805685
In title case: “Raison d’Être”
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1994/10/28/660132.html?pageNumber=65
Per NYT Style Guide, which states (under “italics”) not to italicize foreign
words unless they “are indisputably foreign -- either absent from the
English dictionary or included but labeled foreign. [...] If in doubt,
assume that a word is too familiar in English to be treated as foreign.”
Formula 1
FreeHand
Game Boy
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Hardware/Nintendo-History/Game-Boy/Game-Boy-627031.html
gender
*Gender* refers to a person’s identity, *sex* refers to biological
characteristics.
gewgaw
/gyoo-gaw/ “a gaudy trinket or flashy bauble”.
Garner: “has been predominately so spelled since the 1500s. The 20th-century variant *geegaw* hardly qualifies as even a lexicographic gewgaw.”
Gmail
Google Plus
Greasemonkey
not GreaseMonkey; cf. http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
guerrilla
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=guerilla
guillemets
« and »
H.264
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/
Hanukkah
hark back
Preferred over and more common than harken/hearken.
See Garner 3rd Ed.
Hold ’Em
Home button
home screen
Apple Style Guide says *Home Screen*. Prior to 2022 DF style was lowercase *home screen*, then I changed to match Apple. But in February 2025 I changed back to lowercase. I've always seen both sides of this one, but the tiebreaker is that there isn't just one Home Screen like your Lock Screen. You have multiple home screens. "Put it on your second home screen" would look wrong to me capitalized. See: «Lock Screen».
Hong Kongers
HyperCard, HyperTalk
ID and IDs
Never lowercase as synonym to “identity” or “identify”.
input manager
http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/smart_crash_reports
Internet
Changed back to uppercase February 2025.
The NYT and AP changed to lowercase in 2016, and for a yearslong stretch I followed, but there's only one Internet and it's a thing. We know what it is. Best comparison perhaps is to Earth. When we're talking about the planet, it gets capped, even though in some sense, like the Internet, it's universal from our human perspective.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/business/media/internet-to-be-lowercase-in-new-york-times-and-associated-press.html
jacktastic
JavaScript
je ne sais quoi
Italicize.
jerry-built
adj. of inferior workmanship and materials
jibe
Colloquially, it mean conform. In sailing, it means shift. *Gibe* means jeer
or taunt.
JPEG XL
https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/
judgment
In accordance with both NYT Style Guide *and* Amy’s preference for legal
briefs.
jury-rigged
adj. done or made using whatever is available
keychain
lowercase
keyboard shortcut
Per Apple’s Style Guide, never *keyboard equivalent*. And just plain *shortcut* is now conflatable with Shortcuts macros.
KnowledgeBase
laissez-faire
No italics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/learning/word-quiz-laissez-faire.html
laptop
Prefer *notebook*. 2023-09-21: Rescind this?
John le Carré
Pronunciation: carr-ay. Le Carré at the beginning of a sentence but le Carré mid-sentence.
lede
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/18/magazine/on-language-hed-folo-my-lede-unhed.html
Lego
The company styles it “LEGO” but it’s not an acronym.
lidar
Unclear why Apple goes with "LiDAR" other than to make it seem exotic.
lists, inline
Use letters or numbers wrapped in parentheses: “(1) like this; (2) and
this; and (3) like this.”
loath/loathe
Loathe (v.) means “to hate”. Loath (adj.) means “unwilling”.
Lock Screen
Capitalization per Apple Style Guide. Previous DF style was lowercase. See: «Home Screen».
logomark/logotype
https://www.inc.com/karen-tiber-leland/the-difference-between-a-logomark-a-logotype-which-is-right-for-your-company.html
lying low
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/lying%20low
MacDevCenter
O’Reilly’s Mac site:
Note: Seems like they now use “Mac DevCenter”, too.
MacGuffin
See Roger Ebert:
The Oxford English Dictionary specifies MacGuffin. Usage is divided;
Google shows 1,920 hits for “MacGuffin & Hitchcock,” 1,150 for
“McGuffin & Hitchcock.” In Hitchcock’s book-length interview with
Francois Truffaut, it is spelled MacGuffin. That’s the winner.
MacroMates
magazines (and newspapers and websites, generally)
Do not quote their names. If an article is the first word in the name of an English-language or foreign-language magazine, capitalize it: The New Yorker, L'Express, Le Point, Der Spiegel. Append the word *magazine*, lowercased, if it is needed for clarity or euphony: Time magazine, New York magazine. Quote the titles/headlines of articles and title-case them.
Mobile Safari
modus operandi
No italics. New Yorker and NYT both agree.
multi- (prefix)
Close up in words beginning with either a consonant or a vowel
(except i). multiplayer, multiprocessor, multitasking,
multithreading, multiuser multi-item
Apple Publications Guide
multitouch
Apple used multi-touch until 2012 (Multi-Touch, actually), but this
deserves to be closed up.
mustache
not *moustache*
née/né
News to me (in July 2025): Garner says these Gallicisms (female/male, respectively) apply only to people, not inaninate objects or companies. I've used *née* many times to describe company or product name changes. Garner puts its use to mean "formerly" (for not people) at Stage 1 (rejected), but M-W lists "originally or formerly called" as a second definition of *née*. NOA goes further, with only one definition: "originally called; born (used especially in adding a woman's maiden name after her married name)". So I'm not eschewing for names other than people yet, but, perhaps consider using *formerly* first each time.
neither
Generally singular, but not always: https://archives.cjr.org/language_corner/either_wins.php
The New York Times
"NYT" as a nickname is OK. When referring to them as "the Times", lowercase
the *the*, as per The New Yorker.
NeXTStep
http://www.kevra.org/TheBestOfNext/DifferentNeXTSpellings/DifferentNeXTSpellings.html
NIB file
cap. Old rule was lowercase, nib, but (a) that doesn’t work with XIBs, and
it doesn’t match things like PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF.
none
Can be singular or plural; try substituting “not one” or “not any” to decide. See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/video/is-none-singular-or-plural
notebook
Preferred over *laptop*.
nother
used especially in the phrase *a whole nother*
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nother
numbers
spell out “one” through “nine”, use digits for 10 and higher. Judgment call
on zero/0. See NYT for exceptions, such as ages, sums of money, etc.
Nvidia
Per NYT.
OK, OK’s, OK’d, OK’ing
Including as a verb. (DFW uses it as a verb in a Word Note in the New Oxford
American Dictionary.) As Garner notes, the conjugated forms of *okay*
(okayed, okaying, okays) are more natural but OK is the original.
Perhaps we should reconsider and go with OKs, (OK'd contraction of OKed),
OKing for verbs, and OK's for nouns? Noun form is so rare it's unlikely
to come up.
old-fashioned, old-fashioneds
The cocktail.
The Omni Group
on-screen
adj. and adv., according to New Oxford
onstage
Pac-Man
pageview
passcode
Better than PIN. Also, “passcode” is used in Settings: Face ID & Passcode.
pathname
I always referred to these as *paths* but Apple’s style guide specifies *pathnames*, which (a) I’m OK with, and (b) nicely parallels *filenames* (which Apple also endorses).
https://support.apple.com/guide/applestyleguide/p-apsg4473eab0/1.0/web/1.0#apd27c40aaa425a4
paywall
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paywall
PCMag
per se
No italics. See “foreign words”.
Personal names
Sebastiaan de With lowercases the “de”. De With gets capped at sentence
start though. See NYT Manual of Style.
phrasal adjectives
Garner's American English: The Compound Conundrum:
“When the first or last element in a phrasal adjective is part of a compound noun, it too needs to be hyphenated: *post-cold-war norms*, not *post-cold war norms*. Otherwise, as in that example, *cold* appears more closely related to *post* than to *war*.”
Some publications endorse a style where, for a proper name, you leave the proper name un-hyphenated but then use an en-dash, instead of a hyphen, for the connector: “a few Apple Park–like briefing rooms”, “post–World War II novel”. I think it better to simply hyphenate the entire compound phrase: “a few Apple-Park-like briefing rooms”, “post-World-War-II novel”. The difference between the en-dash and hyphen is too subtle even for many careful and sharp-eyed readers to notice.
See also: https://bit.ly/eng-stackexchange-multiword-adjectives
PlayBook
RIM’s short-lived tablet.
Playdate
Panic’s handheld game system:
PlayStation
Mnemonic for the intercapped S: “PS4” and “PS5”, but no one calls the Playdate the “PD”.
plugin
Changed from *plug-in* on 17 Mar 2007, for the same reasons that apply to
email vs. e-mail. See http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html
plurals
Proper names ending in *y* just add an *s*: O’Reilly → O’Reillys.
Use apostrophes to pluralize letters and numbers, per the NYT: *he got A’s and B’s on his report card*; *mind your p’s and q’s*.
iPhone 4 → iPhone 4’s
(But: Apple Publications Style Guide pages 96, 135 & 174: "iPhone 4 devices.
Best: rephrase.") “iPhone 4s” as a plural for “iPhone 4” is easily conflated
with “iPhone 4S”, singular.
yes’s and no’s (M-W and NOAD dictionaries both say *yeses* and *noes*, but there's
some support here: https://www.margieholdscourt.com/making-yes-and-no-plural/, and I find those spellings ungainly.)
In headlines, I've wavered between using apostrophes for plurals for acronyms and initialisms, à la the NYT, and not, for clarity with DF's all-caps style for headlines. ("Truckers Still Buy CB's"; "CBS Announces New Show".) As of July 2022, let's go back to just adding "s": https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/07/21/minecraft-bans-nfts
plus/+
Apple News+, Apple TV+. This is different from something like “Yahoo!”
because the “+” is pronounced. Surely the programming language is “C++”,
not “C Plus Plus”. Also, “+” has no standard meaning as a punctuation mark
in English — again, as opposed to “Yahoo!”.
poring over
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/pore-over-vs-pour-over-poor-usage-difference
PostScript
PowerBook
Power Mac
preamp
Short for preamplifier.
Quick Look
Quicksilver
rack one’s brain, nerve-racking
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/rack-vs-wrack
Garner: The important thing to know about the two spellings is that *wrack* is predominant in only one specialized sense: “seaweed” or “kelp.” In all other senses and idioms, *rack* is the word.
ray tracing
readme
I’m unsure about this one. Apple Style Guide goes with “Read Me”.
Recode
They use “Re/code”, but this abuses the traditional meaning of a slash
in prose. E.g., “Walt Mossberg, of Re/code/WSJ fame.” Let “Re/code” go
in blockquotes from Recode, though.
Relay
No longer “Relay.fm” as a brand name.
résumé
right-wing
And, natch, “left-wing”, but that doesn’t seem to come up.
rip-off (n.)
rip off (v.)
roundrect
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/roundrect
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt
scorebug
Dictionaries still keep it open (*score bug*), but in the sports media world, the term is locked-in jargon. Rocketed from never once appearing on DF, to being in the headline and used 31 times in the article with this one: https://daringfireball.net/2025/02/fox_new_scorebug_graphic_design
screenshot
scroll bar
The button you drag is the *scroller*; on Mac OS 9 it was the *scroll box*.
See Apple Style Guide 2006
scroll wheel
secondary-click (v.)
Apple Style Guide endorses *Control-click*, I suspect because Control-clicking always works, no matter the input device. But *secondary-click* encompasses all ways to open a contextual menu: Control-clicking, two-finger-clicking, right-clicking, or even left-clicking for a user who’s customized their mouse buttons.
seesaw
In preference to *teeter-totter*.
shitcan (v.)
shitshow
shit-fit
sidenote
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sidenote
signalled, signaller, signalling
See *cancel*.
Smart Connector
Three-circle inductive connector on iPad accessories.
smartphone
souped-up
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/souped-up
Soundbooth
Adobe sound editor.
spec, specced, speccing
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spec
subexpression
subpattern
Named or numbered captured group in a regular expression pattern. No
hyphens. “Subpattern” is from the PCRE docs; “subexpression” is Friedl’s
term, although Friedl defines it as any component of a larger expression,
not limited to captured groups.
subpixel
SuperMegaUltraGroovy
Chris Liscio’s company.
surnames, Dutch
“Dutch names are kind of weird. When spelled out in full, like Wouter de Groot or Guido van Rossum, the middle bit is not capitalized. However, when using the last name only, it is. So, Van Rossum is joining Microsoft whereas De Groot is sending you a mildly pedantic email.”
SwiftUI
https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/
sync, syncs, synced, syncing
Changed from sync/syncs/synchs/synching 31 Jul 2008.
tallscreen
A perfectly cromulent neologism, in contrast to *widescreen*.
Tapback
Apple: “A feature in the Messages app. Don’t use as a verb.” I wouldn’t hesitate to use it as a verb but I can’t think of a sentence where I’d want to.
tentpole
New Oxford American has it open as a noun — *tent pole* — and hyphenated as a modifier. But Merriam-Webster has it closed up in both forms: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tentpole
Textpattern
TidBITS
time
OLD: a.m. and p.m., lowercase and with dots.
NEW: am and pm, lowercase, no dots. *Meet me at 7:30 pm.*
time stamp
timezone
titles
books, movies, albums: quotes or *ems*? NYT and Economist say quotes
I say: italicize
Periodicals, such as newspapers, magazines, and web sites, don’t
have titles, they have names. Just cap them — don’t use quotes
or italics.
Articles and songs: Quotes
tmesis
"the separation of parts of a compound word by an intervening word or words, heard mainly in informal speech (e.g., *a whole nother story*; *shove it back any-old-where in the pile*"
Abso-fucking-lutely or abso*fucking*lutely? Play by ear?
Touch Bar
Touch ID
touchscreen
toward
Not *towards*, which is British.
https://fs.blog/2014/03/david-foster-wallace-common-word-usage-mistakes/
“Factoid: Except for *backwards* and *afterwards*, no preposition ending in
*-ward* takes a final *s* in US English.”
TrackBack:
as per
travelled, traveller, travelling
See: *cancel*.
T. rex
Trojan horse
t-shirt
Lowercase "t" is contrary to NY Times Style Guide; Garner says both are acceptable but T-shirt is more common. My thinking: if we go with T-shirt, wouldn’t we also need to go with E-mail (nothwithstanding DF’s style of “email”)? [Counterpoint: The “T” in T-shirt is like the “A” in “A-frame house” -- it is the uppercase letterform specifically that represents the shape of the object. Counter-counterpoint: T and t are far more similarly shaped than A and a.]
TurboGears:
Uighurs
Per NYT, New Yorker, and WaPo.
universal binary
lowercase, see: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/universal_binary/
Still: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/building_a_universal_macos_binary
ultra wide (camera)
Apple Style Guide: ultra (prefix) — Close up except before a vowel.
ultrafast, ultralight, ultrasharp, ultrathin, ultrawide
ultra-efficient
iPhone 15 reviewer guides use “Ultra Wide”, titlecased, however.
EXIF metadata in Photos: “Ultra Wide Camera — 14 mm ƒ2.2”
Unix
upward
not *upwards* (see note at )
URLs
when used as literal text, italicize:
The URL is *http://daringfireball.net/*.
In general, prefer “URL” to “URI”, even when URI is arguably more
technically accurate.
Use “scheme” rather than “protocol” when talking about things like
“message:” or “http:”.
used to
Garner: *used to*, not *use to*, is the phrase meaning “formerly”.
*Never used to* is better than *didn't used to*.
v.; vs.
Garner: Both are acceptable abbreviations of of *versus*, but they differ in application: *vs.* is more common except in names of law cases, in which *v.* /vee/ is the accepted abbreviation.
voilà
VMware
web clip
The custom web page bookmark icons on iPhone. Apple goes with “WebClip”
which just seems wrong.
webfont
WebCore
one word, open source rendering engine at heart of Web Kit
See:
WebDAV
Webex
Cisco dropped the inner-capped "WebEx" a while back.
WebKit
closed up, camel case
cf.
webmail
WebOS
Palm uses “webOS”.
webpage
If website is closed, so should be webpage.
website
one word, lowercase. (Switched from “web site” 23 Oct 2009.)
TWM agrees: http://thatwhichmatter.tumblr.com/post/166241561/website-web-site-website-is-one-word-lowercase
And now (April 2010) the AP: http://jimray.tumblr.com/post/526863310
whack-a-mole
As per New Oxford American. But the coin-op game trademark is for "Whac-a-Mole", which, as I noted, looks wac-y.
https://daringfireball.net/2021/04/et_tu_procter_gamble#fn1-2021-04-09
whether/if
If you can use *whether*, always do so. *If* implies conditionality. *Whether or not* is redundant.
http://htmlgiant.com/?p=20022
white paper
Widget Bar
singular, not “Widgets Bar”
Wi-Fi:
cf.
WordPress
Xbox
XIB file
XKCD
“‘Xkcd’ is frowned upon.” http://xkcd.com/about/
Author: Randall Munroe
Yahoo
not “Yahoo!”
Yippee Ki Yay
http://flickr.com/photos/joeclark/808647721/
Zelensky, Volodymyr
Wikipedia and numerous other publications spell his surname "Zelenskyy", but the NYT, New Yorker, and BBC News all go with one y.
* * *
References, roughly in order of priority:
Garner’s Modern English Usage (5th Ed.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garner%27s_Modern_English_Usage
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/garners-modern-english-usage-9780197599020?cc=us&lang=en&
The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst (v. 4.0)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Style
The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
The NYT Manual of Style and Usage
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101905441?tag=duckduckgo-osx-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1
The Economist Style Guide
http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/ (seemingly pulled some time in 2011)
https://web.archive.org/web/20110430075824/http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/
Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/
New Oxford American Dictionary (MacOS, iOS built-in dictionary)
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195392883.001.0001/acref-9780195392883
Apple Style Guide
https://support.apple.com/guide/applestyleguide/welcome/web
https://books.apple.com/us/book/apple-style-guide/id1161855204
Apple Trademark List
http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html