2025 IRONCLAD

Written Editorial Style Guide

Please refer to the AP Stylebook for any items not covered.

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Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Voice & Style
3. Format
4. Numbers
5. Punctuation
6. People
7. Places
8. Terms
9. Text format

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Overview

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The Manifesto

It should be just as effortless for users to navigate our content as it is to use the Ironclad platform.

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Radical customer focus is a competitive advantage.

Natural, conversational communication stands out in a sea of convoluted SaaS copy.

Our audience is made up of people, not personas. Regardless of demographics, people want to be informed and entertained.

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Content Principles

Value-driven

Purposeful

Opinionated

Internally Aligned

The intention of a piece should be immediately clear and easily synthesized into a single statement of purpose that serves at least one of our company IRONS.

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The value that a piece of content conveys to the reader should be clear and single-threaded.

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We are the pioneers of the digital contracting space. We have the expertise, so we speak with authority and rely on external expertise when we need to fill gaps.

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Content should be consistent (in form and purpose) across our publishing channels.

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Ask yourself…

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Purposeful

• What results do we want to achieve with this piece of content?
• What actions do we hope to inspire?
• What would the business impact be if we didn’t publish it?
• Which specific persona are we writing this for?
• Who is going to care about this, truly?

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Ask yourself…

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Opinionated

• Do we have something new and/or interesting to say?
• Are we being prescriptive or vague?

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Ask yourself…

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Value-driven

• What results do we want to achieve with this piece of content?
• What actions do we hope to inspire?
• What would the business impact be if we didn’t publish it?
• Which specific persona are we writing this for?
• Who is going to care about this, truly?

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Ask yourself…

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Internally aligned

• Are we talking about our products and features in the same way across channels?
• Are we holding content published on different channels to different quality standards?
• Are there opportunities to repurpose existing content?
• Are we taking past performance of similar content into consideration?
• Has the content we’re ideating already been produced in some capacity by another team?

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Voice & Style

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We’re smart, and so is our audience. We don’t pander to them with excessive jargon, and we don’t talk down to them and insult their intelligence. We maintain a genuine interest in what’s going on in their business and try to help them solve contract problems. We’ve been where they are and we understand what they’re going through. We advise them from experience and build trust by being approachable, engaged, and confident. We want to empower our readers and help them do what they need to do.

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Voice Overview: The Approachable Authority

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Voice Principles

We’re modern, not trendy.

We’re direct and straightforward.

We’re grounded and relaxed.

We’re engaged with our customers.

We don’t use unnecessary words or extra syllables. We choose our words as precisely as possible.

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We are aware of tropes, cliches, and buzzwords, and we don’t fall victim to them. When using AI-generated content, we augment with real world details and examples.

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We don’t fabricate a sense of urgency, and we don’t escalate emotion. We’re bold, but low-key. Business casual, if you will.

We’re attentive to our customers and show that we have a deep understanding of their needs.

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Voice Tones

Confident

Clear

Approachable

Primary

We know we are the best at what we do, and so don’t need to flaunt it. We have subject matter expertise, an experienced team, and superior technology. We’re confident in our mission, vision, and product, but we’re never brash or full of bluster.

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We understand what we’re trying to communicate and we prioritize our audience’s understanding. While we can communicate with enthusiasm and a certain sparkling intelligence, we don’t use flashy or amusing copy for its own sake. We try to keep complexity to a minimum.

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We’re experts, but we don’t put ourselves above our audience. We take an advisory and consultative approach to our copy. We show our audience that we relate to them without always pushing a solution.

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Writing Tips

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• Focus on “you” rather than “we.” Customers don’t care about our image. They just want to know what we can do for them.
• Highlight value instead of listing features. Make it easy for the customer to see how their lives will improve by using Ironclad.
• Write for non-technical audiences. Use descriptive headlines and subheads and group similar ideas together so they can be consumed more easily.
• Be mindful of jargon. Empty words don’t provide value for our readers.
• Be direct, clear, and specific. Opt for short words and sentences. Avoid fluff and unnecessary words. Use contractions when you would in conversation.

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Writing Tips

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• Read it outloud yourself. Google’s quality guidelines ask if you personally would bookmark your page or send a link to a friend. If we don’t want to read our own content, there’s no reason to think others would want to.
• Be consistent. Follow the guidelines presented here.
• Assume their intelligence. Introduce and explain terms and topics, but do so as a kind reminder, not like they’re learning for the first time.
• Acknowledge their problems. Contracts are the biggest unsolved problem in their business. We understand this and want to help.
• Present a solution. Digital contracting isn’t a sales pitch—It’s a unique solution to their real problem. We don’t need to sugarcoat our pitch because the facts (and our customers) speak for us.
• Use social proof. Quote customers, link to case studies, recent industry reports to prove that our solution is genuine and effective.

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Writing Tips

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Call attention to our differentiators:

• Our raving fan customer base and the many major logos we’re proud to call our clients
• Our user-friendly, self-serve interface (i.e. “like an iPhone” or “no-code workflow builder”)
• Fast adoption, because it’s so intuitive and we have dedicated customer success teams and training resources
• Our community, which is uniquely active in knowledge sharing and networking in the legal space

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AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude can be powerful content creation partners, but they cannot be solely relied on to produce high quality, value-focused content. Their outputs must always be reviewed and thoroughly edited and their sources checked before being published.

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When working with them to create content, follow the guidelines outlined here.

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AI Overview

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AI

Prompt Engineering

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Certain types of content may require more specificity of voice, tone, and structure depending on where it will live and who will see it. Keep this in mind when prompting, and be as thorough as possible in your instruction.

Include a narrative emulator, though look out for pushback on copyright concerns and modify accordingly.

• “Write this article in the straightforward, objective, journalistic style of the Wall Street Journal.”
• “Write this headline in the same snappy, witty, and slightly controversial style as the 2022 viral Oatly billboard campaign ads.“
• “Write me a song about digital contracting and the difficulties legal teams face with manual contract review in the lyrical style of modern pop female grammy winners and the structural style of haiku poetry.“***

Provide existing documentation and prompt for persona value concepts you’d like to explicitly call out.

• “Attached is an existing Ironclad case study. Write the new article in the same style and format as the attachment, including pulling out quotes that position Ironclad positively to procurement teams and using full sentences as subheaders”

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AI

Prompt Engineering

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• Explicitly call out phrases, styles, or formats to avoid or include.
• “Do not use jargony business buzzwords like ‘digital transformation,’ ‘driving efficiencies,’ ‘optimizing value’ or other similar words. Instead, use more varied and interesting vocabulary to explain your point.”
• “Do not use the sentence construction ‘from (blah blah blah) to (blah), Ironclad does (blah)” or the phrase “(blah) has you covered’”

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• Call out narrative elements you want to focus on.
• “In the article, place emphasis on how the contracts manager used Ironclad to forge a path to promotion to Head of Legal Ops. However, coverage of this point should not exceed ⅓ of the total article.”
• “Avoid explicitly naming the incumbent CLM or positioning them negatively. Instead, focus on the positive effects experienced after the incumbent CLM was fully removed.”

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AI

Prompt Engineering

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• Call out what feeling or reaction you want the reader to have or take after having read your article.
• “Write the article in such a way that readers will understand and be excited about the fact that that implementing Ironclad at their own organizations will help them grow their careers.”

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• Iterate! You’ll rarely get exactly what you’re looking for on the first pass. Highlight sections of the outputs, ask for improvements, and don’t be afraid to call out things that don’t make sense or that weren’t delivered.
• “The narrative within these four sections is incomplete. It describes the client needing to start a search for a CLM and then goes directly into how they rolled it out across the entire company. It completely skips the decision making and approval process and what was required for it. Please revise using details from the transcript, and particularly focus on what it took for the client to get buy in from his team to purchase.”
• “Please describe in detail what these “manual processes” were using facts from the attached transcript.”
• “These subheaders are very generic. Please write new ones that draw from the customer’s actual experience.”

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AI Final

Output Editing

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Even if the content we produce is largely generated by AI, we still want it to be truly valuable to our customers and to sound uniquely like Ironclad. To that end…

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• Look out for elements that scream “AI wrote this,” including:
• Formulaic sentence constructions like “In today’s fast-paced business landscape/world/environment” or “ABC isn’t just XYZ; its DEF” or “From X to Y, blah blah Z”
• Overuse of em dashes
• B2B jargon paired with a lack of detail or examples
• Repetition of subheadings from old content (when providing examples)

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• AI tools will have text markers when you copy paste from their interfaces. Delete and reformat them.
• ##s to indicate heading tags
• Bullets to indicate indentation
• Symbols to indicate emojis
• Revision labels like (edited) or (v3)

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AI

Output Editing

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AI is not infallible. It can hallucinate or just simply do things incorrectly, so it’s important to VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY.

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• If you’ve uploaded a call transcript and your AI tool has extracted speaker quotes, check the quote against what’s in the transcript.

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• Double check that whatever calculations the tool outputs make sense.

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• Remove all hidden HTML. So important it’s in the guide twice!!

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• Do a final review for jargon.
• “Please review the final output for marketing clichés found commonly in CLM vendor content and replace them with concrete details from the deck.”

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Format

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Headings

Use headings to your advantage.

Readers don’t consume content linearly; they skim. Your headline is the reason people will either read or skip your article.

In the same camp, subheadings are also important to allow the reader to skim and consume the content without reading.

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Capitalization: Titles & Headings

Use title case for titles and headings, regardless of content type.

• The Modern GC Playbook
• Announcing Ironclad’s Series C and Why We’re Awesome

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Use sentence case without punctuation for subheadings (a.k.a H2s, H3s, etc.) Do use punctuation when the subheading is a question, or otherwise calls for it.

• Examples of subscription license agreements
• The purpose of a subscription license agreement

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SEO note: always use title case in meta titles, no matter what.

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Capitalization: Nouns

Proper Nouns

Capitalize proper nouns, i.e. specific names, whether it’s the name of a person, place, or product:

• Ironclad Jurist
• Intake Agent
• Golden Gate Park
• Harvey Milk

Capitalize the names of websites and web publications. Don’t italicize.

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Don’t use capital letters for departments or words that are really just descriptors. Don’t use capital letters for emphasis, even if they appear elsewhere in product names.

• Ironclad’s workflow design
• The legal operations team
• Incorrect: Historically, Legal has always been the “department of no.”
• Correct: Historically, legal has always been the “department of no.”
• Incorrect: “We have a fleet of Agents that execute tasks.”
• Correct: “We have a fleet of agents that execute tasks.”
• Correct: “Ironclad’s Intake Agent helps legal teams manage their workloads.”

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Capitalization: Frequent Offenders

There is no need to capitalize general, descriptive words in the middle of a sentence, even if you’re going to abbreviate them or think they’re important words that require emphasis.

Examples of commonly edited phrases:

We implemented Ironclad, a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system.

• Contract lifecycle management is an adjective phrase here and doesn’t need capitalization.

She was on the Legal team at Databricks.

• Legal is a simple adjective and not a proper noun.

Should You Be Tracking Your Contract Data?

• Since this is a complete sentence in question form, it should use sentence case.

The last issue of the Ironclad Blueprints Series gets released Friday.

• Based on context, we know series is not part of the name of the program but rather a description of what it is.

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Lists

Unordered lists (i.e. bullets)

Use bullets when listing items to make the copy easier to skim.�

Capitalize the first word of each bulleted item. Use periods after a bulleted item only if it forms a complete sentence. Do not use periods in bullets that are sentence fragments.

Ordered lists (numbers)

Only use numbered lists when the order of the information is essential, like when presenting step-by-step instructions.

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Numbers

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Numbers

Spell out any number at the beginning of a sentence and any number one through nine. For larger numbers, use the numeral.

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For example:

• One hundred GCs participated in the survey.
• Sarah listened to “Rich Girl” six times in a row.
• My morning commute takes about 30 seconds.
• Our pickleball team won first place in the tournament.

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Use commas in numbers with more than three digits:

• 250
• 3,000
• 200,000

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Use numerals with million, billion or trillion.

For example:

• Experts predict more than 2 million legal ops professionals worldwide will be using Ironclad by 2025.

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Dates

Spell out the day of the week and the month.

• Thursday, July 26th

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Money

Use the dollar sign before the amount. Include a decimal and number of cents if more than 0.

• $20
• $19.99

For large sums of money, use numerals and spell out million, billion or trillion. Do not abbreviate large amounts of money.

• $70 million is correct; $70mm (or $70M) is not.

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Phone Numbers

Use dashes without spaces between numbers.

• 555-867-5309�

Use the appropriate country code for international phone numbers.

• +1-423-867-5309

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Time

Use numerals and AM or PM, with a space in between. Don’t use minutes for on-the-hour time.

• 7 AM
• 7:30 PM�

Use a hyphen and no spaces between times to indicate a time period.

• 7 AM-10:30 PM
• 10-12 PM�

Specify time zones when writing about an event or something else people would need to schedule. We default to PT.

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Abbreviate time zones within the continental United States as follows:

• Eastern time: ET
• Central time: CT
• Mountain time: MT
• Pacific time: PT

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Punctuation

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Apostrophes & Ampersands

Apostrophes

Apostrophes are used to make words possessive. If the word already ends in an s and it’s singular, you also add an ‘s. If the word ends in an s and is plural, just add an apostrophe.

• Tim walked Sam’s dog.
• Tim walked his boss’ dogs.

Watch out for areas where apostrophes are used incorrectly to make a word plural.

• Incorrect: How Legal Pro’s Are Tackling AI in 2025
• Correct: How Legal Pros Are Tackling AI in 2025

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Ampersands

Don't use ampersands unless one is part of a company or brand name. (Note: it is acceptable to use them in web page meta titles.)

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• Ben & Jerry’s

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Commas

When listing three or more items in a sentence, always use the serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma).

• We invited the twins, Michelle, and Jessica.

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You would not use the serial comma if the twins are named Michelle and Jessica.

• We invited the twins, Michelle and Jessica.

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In this case, you’re only listing two items/people, and the names are not necessary to the understanding of the sentence. If a clause can stand on its own as a sentence, known as an independent clause, it should be set off by a comma. If a clause cannot, known as a dependent clause, it should not.

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• Legal built several MSA templates and passed them along to the sales team.
• Legal built several MSA templates, and the sales team used them to close deals.

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Commas

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If a word or phrase is necessary to the understanding of the sentence, it should not be set off with a comma. If it is not, it can be set off with a comma.

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• Michelle and Jessica’s brother Sam is an in-house attorney. Their other brother, Jeff, is not.

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In the first sentence, there is no clear identifier of which brother is being referred to or how many brothers they have, so the name is necessary. The second sentence refers to their other brother, so we know it’s not Sam and that there are only two brothers, so the comma is not necessary.

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Dashes & Hyphens

Use a hyphen (-) without spaces on either side to link words into a single phrase, or to indicate a span or range.

• first-time user
• Monday-Friday�

Use an em dash (—) with NO spaces on either side to offset an aside.

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Use em dashes sparingly to add sentence variety to your writing and to add emphasis to value statements. Do not overuse them.

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• Good enough isn’t an option for Signifyd and their customers–their decisions must be best in class.
• The Ironclad Workflow Builder–our latest release–is a powerful tool.

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TIP: On a Mac, use Option+Shift+Hyphen to make an em-dash.

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Periods

Quotation marks

Periods go inside quotation marks.

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• Jesse said, “Have that report on my desk by Monday.”
• Jesse doesn’t know what you mean by “vacation.”

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Parentheses

Periods go outside parentheses when the parenthetical is part of a larger sentence, and inside parentheses when the parenthetical stands alone.

• I’m going to get in trouble (for this).
• (I’m going to get in trouble for this.)

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Use a single space between sentences.

The practice of using two spaces between sentences died with the electric typewriter.

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Question marks

Quotations

Question marks go inside quotation marks if they’re part of the quote.

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• Who was it that said “with great power comes great responsibility”?
• Who was it that asked “what time is lunch?”

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Parentheses

Like periods, question marks go outside parentheses when the parenthetical is part of a larger sentence and inside parentheses when the parenthetical stands alone.

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• It’s hard to know when (or where?) to use parentheses.
• (Isn’t it hard to know when to use parentheses?)

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Quotation Marks

Use quotation marks to refer to:

• words and letters
• titles of short works (like articles and poems)
• direct quotations

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Periods and commas go within quotation marks. Question marks within quotes follow logic—if the question mark is part of the quotation, it goes within. If you’re asking a question that ends with a quote, it goes outside the quote.

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Use single quotation marks for quotes within quotes.

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People

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Pronouns

When writing web copy, write directly to the audience using the second person point of view (i.e. “you”).

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When writing in the third person, such as in a press release, refer to our audiences as “customers.”

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“Users” may also be used if appropriate, but try to keep it limited as it’s impersonal.

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If your subject’s gender is unknown or irrelevant, use “they,” “them,” and “their” as a singular pronoun. Use “he/him/his” and “she/her/her” pronouns as appropriate.

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Names & Titles

The first time you mention a person in writing, refer to them by their first and last names. On all other mentions, refer to them by their last name.�

Capitalize a job title only when it comes before the name and is a formal title; when the job title comes after the name, it should be lowercase when there are multiple of the same roles and upper case if there are not. Also use lowercase when using a job description rather than a formal title.

• Chief Entertainment Officer Kelly Clarkson starts on Monday.
• Kelly Clarkson, the company’s Chief Entertainment Officer, starts on Monday.
• All the new executive officers start on Monday.�

Don't refer to someone as a “ninja,” “rockstar,” or “wizard” unless they literally are one.

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Note that the plural form of general counsel is general counsel. When using this phrase, avoid adding “s”. When abbreviating general counsel, however, feel free to use the plural form “GCs”. With no apostrophe (and uppercase is okay).

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Places

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Cities & States

Spell out all city and state names. Don’t abbreviate city names.

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Per AP Style, all cities should be accompanied by their state, with the exception of:

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• Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington.

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Terms

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Common Industry Terms

Redline(s) should appear as one word in every instance.

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• Refer to the redlined document attached.
• I referenced your redlines and my responses are below.

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eSignature should be used when used as a common adjective or noun. When used as a verb, use the hyphen.

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• Ironclad is an eSignature solution.
• I will have to e-sign the document tomorrow.

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We say end-to-end when it comes before the noun and end to end if it comes after what it’s describing.

• Ironclad is an end-to-end contract lifecycle management platform.
• Ironclad handles the whole contract process from end to end.

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Lifecycle should appear as one word in every instance.

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We say counterparty or CP, not third-party or 3P.

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Styling to Avoid

We don’t say SaaS or tech clichés like:

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• “Built from the ground up”
• “Today’s business landscape / In today’s fast-paced business environment”
• Built by lawyers, for lawyers
• Legal’s in our DNA
• Revolutionary

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Sometimes they’re necessary, but as much as possible, we try to avoid jargon or vague business terms like the below and replace it with more varied, interesting, and engaging vocabulary or details:

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• Driving operational efficiencies
• Streamlining operations
• Optimize your processes
• Accelerate your business
• Unlock efficiency

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Ok: The VP of Legal Operations streamlined contracting processes and drove efficiency gains in Q2 of 2024.

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Better: The VP of Legal Operations cut contracting time for his department down by 93% in Q2 of 2024 by standardizing five different contract types.

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Products

Ironclad

• Not Ironclad CLM, IC CLM, IroncladApp, or the Ironclad CLM
• Can pair with “platform” to describe the system

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Ironclad’s platform allows legal to review contracts 5x faster.

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Contract lifecycle management (CLM) software

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Feature names should use the full name upon first mention and then can drop the “Ironclad” for subsequent mentions and keep the capitalization of the second word

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• Ironclad Repository
• Ironclad Dashboard
• Ironclad Workflow Designer
• Ironclad Editor
• Ironclad Insights
• Ironclad Clickwrap
• Ironclad Signature
• Ironclad Jurist
• Ironclad X integration (i.e. Ironclad Salesforce integration)

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Text

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Formatting

Text formatting

Use italics to indicate the title of a long work (like a book, movie or album) or to emphasize a word, though use italics for emphasis sparingly.

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Use italics when citing an example of an in-app Ironclad element, or referencing button and navigation labels in step-by-step instructions:

• Next, click Assigned to Me.�

Don’t use underline formatting, and don’t use any combination of italic, bold, caps and underline.

Acronyms

Spell the words out the first time the acronym is used in each piece of content, followed by the initials in parentheses. The acronym alone can then be used through the copy in that article.

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• Ironclad is my favorite contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform.

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