# Our terminology

The language we use at Mattermost is extremely important. When we use consistent terminology it means we're all speaking the same language, and our customers know what to expect whether they're on the website or in the product documentation.

Terminology standardization started in 2022. The project has a large scope and includes:

* Standardizing headings to make them sentence case.
* Standardizing all text in the System Console to make them sentence case.
* Standardizing how we refer to our products and plans, as well as the mechanisms available to use them.
* Changing the casing of words to lowercase where appropriate.
* Making our Edition and License page in the System Console consistent and clear.
* Creating a UI text library of terms and strings for teams and external partners to use when creating mockups, designs, wireframes, and integrations.

The [outline of the project is documented here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ImzS3UhCkFzMF2-6FNByw9W2r8Gvx1sudBA0FjazVH0/edit#heading=h.crjl4fz9pz1n).

## Sentence case headings

We decided to change our headings to sentence case to:

* Decrease friction for contributors so they wouldn't have to guess at getting heading capitalization right.
* Bring our documentation format in line with current industry standards around readability.
* Make our documentation easier to read.

This is a work in progress with documentation updates delivered in Q1 of 2022. The scope of the project extends to the Mattermost website, developer documentation, Handbook, and integrations content. There is no date set for completion.

## In-product text

Currently, all our in-product text uses title case. This is jarring.

In Q3 of 2022, this will be tackled incrementally, in sections corresponding to the menu layout in the System Console. This will be done in consultation with the QA team as well as the Localization team.

## Names of things

What we call our icons, features, apps, and services is inconsistent purely in terms of casing. We have kicked off a process to standardize the casing of most of the icons, features, apps, and services to write them in lowercase so proprietary ones stand out. This is currently in progress.

## Product and plan terminology

The way we refer to our product and services is: "Mattermost sells subscription plans for both cloud and self-hosted deployment. Self-hosted deployments will need to upload a license file to activate the subscription."

All of our products are subscription plans. However, our self-hosted deployments also require a license file which is downloaded during the purchase process. This is the only difference between the two.

**Note:** Currently our user purchase flow refers to "Subscriptions" for Cloud and "Licenses" for self-hosted. This will be adjusted to bring the messaging into alignment.


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