The OCV Style Guide is used for the handbook and public-facing materials. It provides guidelines to keep our content and communications consistent and effective. It is a living document and should be referenced often for the latest guidance.

Describing Open Core Ventures

  1. Always spell out “Open Core Ventures on the first reference. Use “OCV” for all following instances.
  2. Don’t use “invest” to describe OCV. OCV starts companies, it does not invest in existing companies.
  3. Use the term “companies” when referring to our portfolio companies. Don’t use “portfolio” or “PortCo”.

Table of Contents

Voice and tone

  1. Plainspoken: Write like you speak. Avoid needless words.
  2. Professional: Be brief and focused.
  3. Polished: Identify your audience and be consistent in addressing the same audience unless you specify otherwise.

Style conventions

Use the most popular U.S. English spelling and phrasing.

Active voice

Whenever possible, use active voice instead of passive voice.

Active voice identifies the subject that performs the action. In the example below, “Contributors write the handbook,” it’s easy to see who is doing what. Active voice is closer to the style used in conversation and is especially important for localization.

In passive voice, “The handbook is written by the contributor,” the subject receives the action. This sentence uses more words and takes longer to identify the subject.

The table below shows more comparisons between active and passive voice.

Active Passive
Contributors write the handbook. The handbook is written by the contributor.
Remove your shoes before entering the house. Shoes should be removed before entering the house.
The cat dropped the phone on the floor. The phone was dropped on the floor by the cat.

Acronyms

For clarity, spell out acronyms at first use. For example, “POC” can mean either “proof-of-concept” or “point-of-contact”. Use the format “proof-of-concept (POC)” on first use.

Capitalization

  1. Use sentence case for titles and headlines.
  2. Capitalize brand names unless the brand name uses unusual capitalization (eBay, GitLab). In general, default to the preferred capitalization of the brand unless the entire brand name is lowercase. In these cases, capitalize the first letter (example: Reddit, Lego).
  3. Capitalize work titles when they precede a name. For example, “General Partner Sid Sijbrandij.”
  4. Use lowercase for work titles when there is a comma separating the subject from the title. For example: “the graphic designer, Dakota Jones” and “Dakota Jones, senior graphic designer”