Guidelines

Dates and times

Strive for simplicity and clarity

  • Follow the AP style guide format: X a.m. or X p.m. (lowercase with periods in between).
  • Do not use :00 after times on the hour (for example 8 a.m. is correct; 8:00 a.m. is not correct).
  • When referring to 12 p.m., use the word “noon” to avoid confusion.
  • Ask yourself if adding a year is really needed.
    • When referring to decades, do not use an apostrophe. Example: 1980s not 1980’s or ‘80s not ‘80’s is also acceptable.
  • Regarding time zones, it is preferred to remove “standard” or “daylight” from the time zone abbreviation, as depending on the year, it could be either one (for example 3 p.m. CT is correct; 3 p.m. CST is not preferred).
  • Calendar dates — Follow AP Style. Do not use ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd) Example: “August 3, 2021” not “August 3rd, 2021” and not “3 August, 2021.”
    • Do not use the word “on” before a day or date. Example: “The vote will take place on December 9” is not correct. “The vote will take place December 9” is correct.
green checkmark

Yep!

  • The event is January 7 at 10 a.m. ET.
  • MLK Jr. Day will be observed January 17.
red checkmark

Nope.

  • The event is January 7th, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. EST.
  • MLK Jr. Day will be observed January 17th, 2022.

Capitalization

Capitalize the first word of a heading and/or sentence, and proper nouns (names of products (i.e. trademarks), countries, or people). Use lowercase for everything else. When in doubt, if it is not a proper noun, use lowercase (ex: red team).

Headlines and subheads

Use sentence case for all headlines and subheads.

  • If the headline is a complete sentence, include a period. Example: “Catch threats others miss.”
  • If the headline is not a complete sentence, do not include a period. Example: “How it works”

Depending on the creative treatment, in some instances which sentence case is not preferred, title case is acceptable. Please defer to dl-marketing-creative@varonis.com for guidance.

Titles

Use title case. Capitalize all words in a title except articles (a, an, the); prepositions of three or fewer letters (for, of, on, up, to, etc.); and conjunctions of three or fewer letters (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet, etc.) unless any of those start or end the title.

Titles include but are not limited to:

Blog titles, webpage titles, event titles, presentation titles, etc.
Third-party software should be capitalized and follow the style guidelines of the company (example, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, etc.). Generic terms such as “document” or “file” should not be capitalized.

green checkmark

Always capitalize:

  • Varonis
  • Varonis Data Security Platform
  • Varonis Incident Response Team (IR team is acceptable on second mention)
  • Zero Trust
  • CISO
  • CTO
  • All product names
red checkmark

Never capitalize:

  • any “cyber” word (cybersecurity, cybercriminal, etc.)
  • data (unless used in part of our product name)
  • ransomware
  • cryptocurrency

Languages

Unless written for a foreign audience, defer to American English rather than British English. Example: “color” versus “colour,” “gray” versus “grey,” “organize” versus “organise.”

Dashes

Ensure you are using the correct dash in copy.

- (hyphen)

A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. Example: “A data-centric security approach is crucial to mitigate risk and protect sensitive data from threats.” A hyphen is not interchangeable with other types of dashes.

“Agencies need a data-first security approach to detect and prevent ransomware proactively. Varonis can implement access changes automatically without interrupting day-to-day operations.”

“Varonis is a best-of-breed, world-class solution.”

– (en dash)

The en dash is often used to indicate spans of time or ranges of numbers. In this context, the dash should be interpreted as meaning either “to” or “through.” There should be a space before and after the endash.

“We will be available from 6 – 8 p.m. today."

— (em dash)

Em dashes are often used to set off parenthetical information. Using em dashes instead of parentheses puts the focus on the information between the em dashes. Em dashes should have spaces before and after. 

“Now our sensitive data — especially our student data — is secure.” 

Widows and orphans

Wherever possible, avoid using widows (when the last line of a paragraph is not able to fit at the bottom of a page or column and instead, sits on the next line by itself) and orphans (when the first line of a paragraph sits at the bottom of a page or paragraph by itself) in copy. 

When writing about our products or a third-party partner’s products, try to keep solution names together on the same line.

green checkmark

Yep!

  • Join us for our latest webinar on cybersecurity tips.
  • "Varonis does all the aggregate work for me of classifying our data in our file server, SharePoint, OneDrive and our Microsoft 365 environment, making sure our information is secure."
red checkmark

Nope.

  • Join us for our live session on cybersecurity tips.
  • "Varonis does all the aggregate work for me of classifying our data in our file server, SharePoint, OneDrive and our entire Microsoft 365 environment, making sure our information is secure."

Writing about people

Because Varonis prefers a more approachable style, when referring to people by name, we include the full name on the first instance, and then only the first name (not Mr. or Ms. for example) each reference after. 

“We really enjoyed speaking with Senior Director Matt Radolec. We appreciated how articulately Matt explained the product.”

We also prefer to say “customer” over “client” and “organization” over “company.”

Job titles

You’ll notice above, “Senior Director” is capitalized. When someone’s title appears  with their name, we capitalize, regardless of where the title appears in proximity to the name. For example, both of these options are correct:

Director of Field Engagement Kilian Englert will be in attendance.

Kilian Englert, the Director of Field Engagement, will be in attendance.

When speaking in generalities about the senior directors within an organization, for example, you do not need to capitalize.

Commonly used titles, such as CEO or CISO, do not need to be spelled out on first instance. Less often used titles (senior video editor, for example) should be spelled out. Below is a list of titles that do not require extending:

  • CEO
  • CIO
  • CISO
  • CTO
  • SVP
  • VP

Departments

Departments or teams are only capitalized when part of a formal title: The Varonis Incident Response Team is correct, but just "incident response team" should be lowercased. Another example would be The Varonis Marketing Department vs. marketing department).