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| 1 | +When writing documentation, follow the following guidelines: |
| 2 | + |
| 3 | +Follow the style of the [Microsoft Writing Style Guide](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/welcome/). |
| 4 | + |
| 5 | +Headings should be in sentence case, not title case. Don't use gerunds in titles. |
| 6 | + |
| 7 | +Use the active voice whenever possible, and second person to address the reader directly. |
| 8 | + |
| 9 | +Use a conversational tone with contractions. |
| 10 | + |
| 11 | +Be concise. |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +Break up long sentences. |
| 14 | + |
| 15 | +Use the present tense for instructions and descriptions. For example, "The method returns a value" instead of "The method will return a value." |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | +Do not use "we" or "our" to refer to the authors of the documentation. |
| 18 | + |
| 19 | +Use the imperative mood for instructions. For example, "Call the method" instead of "You should call the method." |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +Use "might" instead of "may" to indicate possibility. For example, "This method might throw an exception" instead of "This method may throw an exception." |
| 22 | + |
| 23 | +Use the Oxford comma in lists of three or more items. |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +Number ordered list items all as "1." instead of "1.", "2.", etc. Use bullets for unordered lists. |
| 26 | + |
| 27 | +Use **bold** when referring to UI elements. Use `code style` for file names and folders, custom types, and other text that should never be localized. |
| 28 | + |
| 29 | +Put raw URLs within angle brackets. |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | +Include links to related topics and resources where appropriate. Use relative links if the target file lives in this repo. If you add a link to another page on learn.microsoft.com that's not in this repo, remove https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us from the link. |
| 32 | + |
| 33 | +If you're adding a new Markdown file, it should be named in all lowercase with hyphens separating words. Also, omit any filler words such as "the" or "a" from the file name. |
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