Igbo style guide¶
Use natural Igbo that preserves the reader's task, the responsible person and the result. Read this page with the shared language review and house guide. Examples explain distinctions; complete product translations still need proficient-language review in context.
Voice, terminology and exact meaning¶
Use clear, direct wording and a consistent form of address. Natural agentless constructions are useful when the actor is unknown or irrelevant; do not force every sentence into an English active-voice pattern. Keep a person's action distinct from the application's response. “We” must have an identifiable referent, and friendliness must not soften a warning's meaning.
Choose terminology by function. The supplier's English replacement lists are editing suggestions, not an Igbo dictionary. Ọnọdụ netwọọk concerns network status. A label, a physical sticker and the action of assigning a name need not share one word. Checking a box differs from checking for updates or verifying a value; Chọọ, Chọta and nyochaa are not universal substitutes for every English “check”.
Retain established glossary terms, record unresolved choices, and distinguish approved loans from unexplained English. Do not invent a replacement term merely to avoid borrowing. Source action examples include Họrọ, Kwụsị, Dozie, Mezie and Wepu; select the form for the actual operation. A familiar word for a box does not automatically name an inbox.
Meaning takes precedence over an example marked “preferred” in a supplier guide:
- obodo anyị means “our village”. It cannot preserve “my village” without changing the possessor. Keep singular and plural ownership distinct.
- A restart warning about possible loss must preserve possibility, unsaved work and every affected user. The supplier's ga-efu makes the loss definite; do not strengthen “could” into “will”.
- A password error must retain retry instructions and any case-sensitivity condition. Letter case is different from the size of the displayed type.
- A document that moves after invalid or missing properties are corrected must retain that prerequisite, destination and automatic behavior.
- A failure to find files for a bootable USB drive must retain “bootable”. Permission to access personal information must retain its exact scope.
- Cancel does not mean save. Kàgbuo is the supplier's cancellation example; it cannot promise that the work was saved.
Ị chọrọ ịga n'ihu? illustrates a continuation question. A short label such as Kachapụ aha gị? needs enough surrounding context to identify what will be deleted and any consequential effect. Do not add an irreversible-deletion claim unless that is the actual behavior.
Characters, spelling and punctuation¶
Keep all eight vowels distinct: a e i ị o ọ u ụ. The letters ị, ọ and ụ have dots below; ṅ has a dot above. Dropping those marks can change the word. Uppercase Ị Ọ Ụ Ṅ retain their marks.
Test accent positioning with sequences such as ị́, ị̀, ị̄, ọ́, ọ̀, ọ̄, ụ́, ụ̀, ụ̄, m̀, m̄ and n̄. These are rendering examples, not a requirement to add every mark to ordinary UI text. Combining marks belong with their base letter: do not insert a space inside a cluster or strip marks during search, copying or export. Distinguish orthographic letters from optional tone annotation and quoted transcription.
Digraphs such as ch, gb, gh, gw, kp, kw, nw, ny and sh contain more than one Unicode character. Use language-aware sorting; an exemplar list is not a complete list of characters allowed in names.
Use sentence case for headings, lists and UI text, retaining proper names and literal labels. Do not capitalize every noun or reproduce English title case. Keep protected product names intact; translate the surrounding description without adding an English article or an imported noun-class prefix.
Write compounds and contractions according to their construction. A word count alone cannot tell you to join a compound into one word or insert a hyphen. The supplier contrasts Emekwala / Emela and Arụnyekwala / Arụnyela: before shortening, check negation, emphasis and aspect in the actual sentence. Do not apply a mechanical deletion rule.
Use punctuation for the Igbo sentence. The preposition na becomes n' before a vowel, as in n'ụlọ; a conjunction na is a different use. The auxiliary construction uses a hyphen, as in na-eri. These distinctions are supported by the Onwu spelling notes; do not replace every occurrence of na with an apostrophe or hyphen.
A range such as 30–59 preserves both endpoints. A negative value can use −5; a range dash is not the minus sign. Use … where a UI ellipsis is needed, without copying a four-dot supplier example. Sentence fragments may serve as labels, but errors and instructions must remain understandable. Separate displayed punctuation from the escaping required by the resource format.
Grammar and complete sentences¶
Place modifiers according to the construction. The source examples Uwe ojii, Ụlọ ọcha and Ọmarịcha nwa show that a single fixed adjective-position rule is inadequate. Akwụkwọ Ada, Ụlọ Obi and Aha mmadụ illustrate a following possessor or related noun. Do not append English possessive 's to a protected name.
Keep pronouns separate from their surrounding words and preserve their role. m and mụ are first-person forms; anyị is first-person plural. i / ị are second-person singular subject forms, while gị has other second-person uses. unu is plural “you”; the supplier's ụnụ is not the form in the Onwu examples. ha refers to third-person plural. Do not choose forms merely by translating English pronouns in isolation.
The singular forms i / ị and o / ọ follow vowel harmony with the verb. The Onwu examples distinguish I dere akwụkwọ gị from Ị zara ezi anyị. The third-person forms do not encode the English he/she distinction. Avoid adding a person's sex when it is irrelevant or unknown; retain a specific relationship or identity when the task needs it.
Igbo number marking is not English -s. Source examples include ndị mmadụ, ụmụ nwoke, ụmụ nwaanyị and ụlọ gasị. Use the form appropriate to the noun and intended meaning; ụmụ is not a prefix to put on every object label. Quantities, owners and people must remain exact after substitution into a message.
Preserve tense, aspect, negation and conditions in complete verb phrases. Ọ na-eri nri and Ọ na-agba ọsọ describe ongoing actions. The supplier's E wubela mmezilite describes a completed installation; it cannot label work still in progress. Infinitive examples Ịta, Ịzụ and Igbu show why one vowel prefix cannot be imposed on every stem. Keep distinctions such as siri and sịrị; do not normalize away meaningful spelling.
A request or condition using ka or ma needs its complete construction, not a fixed English subjunctive template. Likewise, English split-infinitive rules do not determine Igbo word order. Conjunctions can express sequence, contrast or condition: preserve that relation instead of banning sentence-initial conjunctions or removing them to shorten text.
Translate idioms by their intended meaning. Review the result without the English beside it, then compare the actor, object, ownership, time and logical scope. Preserve the order of a procedure's actions even when Igbo sentence structure places its explanatory material elsewhere.
Numbers, units and identifiers¶
Use the formatter for the chosen language and territory. CLDR 48 Igbo inherits a decimal point and comma grouping, as in 1,526.75. The Mozilla source mixes contrary decimal and grouping rules with visibly imported examples. Those passages do not establish Igbo locale defaults. A currency example is ₦3,000; do not insert a space after the grouping comma. Use NGN where a currency code is required, and preserve the amount and required precision.
A nonbreaking space can keep 25 kg together, but must not rewrite numeric syntax or identifiers. Preserve counts, percentages, dimensions and units. Date order, calendar names, time format and week start require territory-aware formatting; do not infer a complete locale specification from the supplier's link to an old developer portal. Verify contact details and use clearly fictional, non-callable examples when illustrating an address or phone pattern.
Keep technical symbols distinct:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MB | Megabyte |
| Mbit | Megabit |
| Mbit/s | Megabits per second |
| kbit/s | Kilobits per second |
| B/s | Bytes per second |
| MB/s | Megabytes per second |
| Hz | Hertz |
| MHz | Megahertz |
| pt | Typographic point |
| in | Inch |
The source equates Mbit/s with Kbps. They differ by a factor of 1,000 when the latter means kilobits per second. Uppercase B and lowercase bit also distinguish bytes from bits. Preserve the product's literal unit labels while correcting explanatory text; converting MB to MiB changes the unit and requires checking the value.
The supplier's Pt. is not the usual typographic symbol pt. An opening quotation mark is not an inch symbol; use in or, where appropriate, the double prime ″. Never relabel inches as dm, which means decimetres. Metric notation keeps the standard case of km, m, cm, mm, L, mL, kg and g.
Use established abbreviations only when readers can understand them. The supplier lists Dk for Dị ka and Dgz for Dere gawazịa; these are source examples to review, not universal UI abbreviations. Expand an unfamiliar term before using its abbreviation. Keep HTML, RAM, URL, DNS and TCP/IP exact. DNS expands to “Domain Name System”; do not invent an Igbo initialism by translating each English letter.
A version such as 4.2 is an identifier, not a decimal quantity. Preserve filenames, extensions, acronyms and protected product names. Copyright text must retain its owner and meaning; a supplier's transliterated brand example does not authorize changing a product's spelling.
Messages, accessibility and final review¶
Write each error around the actual failed operation and object. A connection failure phrase cannot serve as a generic template for every failure; a missing driver is not every missing file. Explain what the reader can do next without adding an unsupported diagnosis, blame or guarantee. Distinguish computer memory from storage and from a person's recollection.
Preserve every placeholder and its type, including %d, %s and %1 when present. The source's nkeji %d illustrates a count inside a phrase; check the complete message with zero, one and several values. Do not remove the count or repair damaged spacing by altering parameter syntax. Dynamic names must retain their identity and fit the surrounding grammar.
Translate commands, captions and status text for their separate purposes. A scan in progress must not read as a completed scan. Match instructions to the actual menu, button or checkbox, and keep a sequence distinct from a list of alternatives. Review tooltips, errors and list entries with their context.
Keep key names recognizable on the supported keyboard, including Alt, Ctrl, Shift, Tab, Enter and Esc. Distinguish access keys, command shortcuts, character-entry combinations and displayed key tips. Supplier arrow names and AltGr tables are not proof of a binding on every layout. Test arrows, the numeric keypad, underdotted vowels and combined tone marks without assigning conflicting commands.
Check screen-reader names, focus order, keyboard access, zoom and narrow layouts. For narration, use natural Igbo pronunciation and verify product names, acronyms and spoken URLs. Do not pronounce every borrowed identifier by a blanket English rule or omit punctuation that changes a URL's identity. Provide the captions or transcript required by the delivery surface.
Use the shared review checklist for final terminology, message, formatting and interaction checks. Mozilla's Igbo guide contains useful review advice alongside unrelated template material, including Afrikaans reference and unit passages. Those templates are not Igbo authorities.
Adapted from Microsoft Igbo guidance and Mozilla's Igbo community guide. Credits record the sources, corrections, scope and Mozilla source notices and adaptation terms.