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# Documentation Conventions

This document describes the conventions used in pip’s documentation. We expect it to evolve over time as additional conventions are identified and past conventions are rendered obsolete.

Note

Currently, these conventions are not enforced automatically, and need to be verified manually during code review. We are interested in linters that can help us enforce these conventions automatically.

## Files

### Naming

Folder names should be a single word, all lowercase.

File names must use the kebab-case style (all lowercase, hyphen for separating words) and have the extension `.rst`.

### Encoding

All files in our documentation must use UTF-8 encoding.

### Line Length

Limit all lines to a maximum of 72 characters, where possible. This may be exceeded when it does not make sense to abide by it (eg. long links, code blocks).

## Headings

Use the following symbols to create headings:

1. `=` with overline

2. `=`

3. `-`

4. `^`

5. `'`

6. `*`

For visual separation from the rest of the content, all other headings must have one empty line before and after. Heading 2 (`=`) should have two empty lines before, for indicating the end of the section prior to it.

    =========
    Heading 1
    =========

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.

    Heading 2
    =========

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.

    Heading 3
    ---------

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.

    Heading 4
    ^^^^^^^^^

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.

    Heading 5
    '''''''''

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.

    Heading 6
    *********

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit.

## Writing

Note

We’re still discussing how pip should be capitalized in prose. The current statement here is tentative.

pip is a proper noun, and spelt all lowercase. Do not capitalize pip as “Pip” at the start of a sentence.

Avoid using phrases such as “easy”, “just”, “simply” etc, which imply that the task is trivial. If it were trivial, the user wouldn’t be reading the documentation for it.