Numbers, dates, and times

These three elements form the core that drives our business. Customers rely on numerical data to gauge how well their systems are performing while dates and time provide much needed context for that information.

Basics

• Write numbers as numerals regardless of where they appear in a sentence
• Use commas for numbers with 4 or more digits.
• If absolute numerical accuracy is less important than giving customers a sense of the number, it’s OK to round them to something like 1k (for 1,012) or 324.5 million (for 324,501,082). Use your best judgment with this one.
• Never write whole numbers with a decimal place and trailing zero.

Large numbers

We use common American English for our UI, which creates some challenges with large numbers. International and American English conventions for thousand are the same: a lowercase k. But million, billion, and trillion are trickier because abbreviations differ across regions and industries. For this reason, we abbreviate only thousand, our most common count.

• Abbreviate thousand with a lowercase k with no space between the the last number and the letter: 50k.
• When dealing with larger numbers, use a space and then spell out million, billion, trillion, etc, in lowercase. If space is too tight and you have to abbreviate, use B, M, T, but only if you provide the full spelling elsewhere on the screen or chart and the full number on hover.
• If possible, provide the full number on hover.

Date and time

We use automatic date and time formatting per browser from the standard formatter. To pull in the correct formatting, use the useDate and useTime hooks from One Core.

Note: the only deviation we make from the standard formatter is with the 24-hour clock option (accurate and long). For 12:30 AM, we use 00:30 instead of 24:30.

Abbreviating units of time

Spell out all units wherever possible.

If space is too limited, use the following standard abbreviations:

Decimals and fractions

• Write fractional values in decimal form.
• Round fractional numbers 2 decimal places to the right.
• Include a leading 0 in decimal numbers less than 1.

Money

• Omit the trailing decimal and 0s for whole dollar amounts.
• Place the appropriate currency symbol before the dollar amount with no spaces.
• When including currency with a price, the currency comes at the end with a space between it and the dollar amount.

Percentages

• Use the % symbol with no space between the number and symbol.
• For fractional values in decimal form, always include a leading zero.

EXCEPTION - When pinpoint accuracy is necessary, as with Synthetics data, you can use use up to three decimal places in percentages.

Phone numbers

Separate numbers with hyphens only.