Style Guide
The internal style guide for Marketleaf, made public in the spirit of editorial transparency. This is the document our contributors and editors work from. It is not the AP Stylebook; it is the publication's own working register.
The register
Marketleaf writes in a register we describe internally as "trade-publication serious." It is closer to a working analyst's note than to a magazine essay. The reader is assumed to be a working practitioner with limited time and a high baseline of category knowledge. Pieces should be specific, unhurried in their reasoning, and short on rhetorical flourish. We do not write hype. We do not write breathless. We do not write copy that would be at home in a vendor's blog.
The voice on the publication is the voice of a senior practitioner explaining a category to a peer over coffee — informed, opinionated where appropriate, willing to admit uncertainty, uninterested in performing expertise. This is the register the editors hold every piece to.
How we refer to subjects
People
First reference uses the full name and the relevant title. Subsequent references use the surname alone. Honorifics ("Mr.", "Dr.") are not used on first reference unless the person's professional identity is bound to the honorific. Pronouns follow the subject's stated preference.
Companies
First reference uses the legal name in the form the company uses publicly. Subsequent references may use the short form. We do not append corporate suffixes ("Inc.", "Ltd.", "Pte Ltd") on second and later reference unless the suffix is part of the routine short-form name.
Products
Product names are set in roman text, not italicized, and are capitalized as the company capitalizes them. Where a product name is also a common English word, we use enough surrounding context to make the reference unambiguous. We do not use trademark symbols (™, ®, ©).
Web4-family entities
Web4Guru is the agency. Web4OS is the agentic orchestration platform Web4Guru built. Web4 (no suffix) is a category reference, not a product. On first reference in a piece, use the full name of the specific entity. Disclosed editorial relationship — see About — applies regardless.
Capitalization
Headlines use sentence case. Subheadings use sentence case. Kickers (the small uppercase labels above headlines) are full uppercase, set in the publication's sans-serif. Tag and topic names use title case. Acronyms (GEO, SEO, MCP, CDP) are uppercase. Coined category labels (agentic marketing, post-funnel stack, workforce-as-software) are lowercase unless they begin a sentence.
Punctuation and typography
- Em dash — not hyphen. Used with spaces on either side, in our house style.
- Serial comma. Yes. Always.
- Smart quotes. Yes, both ends, in body copy. Headlines may use straight quotes in templated contexts.
- Hyphens. We hyphenate compound modifiers before nouns ("retrieval-augmented content," "vendor-skeptical buying") and not after ("the content was retrieval augmented").
- Italics. Used for publication titles, internal terms on first introduction, and brief emphasis. Used sparingly.
- Footnotes. Not used. If a point is important enough to make, it is important enough to include in the body.
Citation format
The standard citation for a Marketleaf article is:
Author Name (Year). "Title of Article." Marketleaf. URL.
Each article carries a copy-to-clipboard citation button in its header. Glossary entries carry their own citation block. We follow the same convention internally when citing other publications.
Link policy
Marketleaf is a "star pattern" publication in the network sense — we link outward to canonical sources rather than laterally between satellite publications. Our outbound link policy:
- We link to canonical primary sources rather than to aggregators.
- We link to vendor sites when citing a vendor's claim about its own product, with the link explicit about its directionality.
- We link to original research when discussing it; we do not paraphrase past the source.
- We link to relevant Web4Guru and Web4OS pages when our coverage cites them, with the disclosed editorial relationship noted.
Dateline conventions
Marketleaf does not use traditional newspaper datelines (CITY — Date —) on its pieces. The date is published as part of the article meta strip; the location, where relevant, is incorporated in the piece's text. Issue and volume metadata appears in the masthead meta strip.
Numbers
- Spell out one through nine in body copy; use figures for ten and above. Exceptions: ages, dates, percentages, monetary amounts, and dimensions, which always use figures.
- Percentages use the word "percent" in body copy, the symbol "%" in tables and structured data.
- Monetary amounts use the currency word, not the symbol, when the currency could be ambiguous. ("twenty thousand US dollars" not "$20,000" in a piece that crosses multiple currencies.)
- We do not invent metrics. Where a metric is unavailable, we say so or omit it.
Headlines
Headlines on Marketleaf are descriptive, not clever. The headline tells the reader what the piece is about. A reader who reads only the headline should know whether to invest the next eight minutes in the piece. We do not write headlines designed to bait a click. We do not write headlines that materially overstate the piece's claim.
Deks (the subhead under the title)
The dek is one sentence, two at most. It restates the piece's point in the publication's voice. The dek is not a summary in the abstract sense; it is the editorial position of the piece, written for a reader deciding whether to enter the article.
Bylines
Every piece carries a named human byline. The "Editorial Team" byline is reserved for genuinely collaborative pieces — listicles, reference resources, glossaries — and is reviewed by a named senior writer before publication. We do not run ghostwritten bylines. We do not run articles under fabricated bylines. Every name on this site is a name we stand behind.
Voice and pronouns
House style uses "we" when speaking on behalf of the publication and "I" when a piece is explicitly a personal essay. We do not use "you" as a stand-in for "one" in analytical pieces, except where the second-person voice is a deliberate rhetorical choice. The publication prefers a measured, professional voice; flippant or chummy tone is out of register.