Punctuation for items inside a table

[jorge-campo]

Hey @cheny0 - I want to clarify the use of periods for sentences inside tables. I believe the information I shared with you this morning was either incomplete or incorrect.

The rule to use punctuation only when we have more than one sentence is only for UI strings; it's not a rule for our technical documentation. This was agreed upon some time ago with the Design team, and at the time, we thought it was a good approach. Nothing to change here.

So, what do we do with tables? To remember the rule in tables, consider these:

1. The rule for sentences in tables is the same as the rule for sentences in lists.
2. As a result of (1), end every complete sentence inside tables with a period.
3. Items in lists and table columns should be parallel: if one item in the list/column is a complete sentence, all the items end with a period, even if they are a single word. Items don't need to follow the same structure across the table, only within the same column.

I checked this information with kimi.com, which is much better at providing sources than ChatGPT, from my experience.

Here is an example from GitHub documentation:

We'll need to write this information in the Docs Standards.

[cheny0]

Sounds good 👍

[jorge-campo]

Adding this discussion as a new task for the OneDoc writing rules.