Italian (Italy) style guide¶
Use this page for Italian written for readers in Italy. Follow the shared voice, mechanics and localization review guidance. The examples below resolve Italian choices; they do not establish product features or replace approved terminology.
Address and register¶
Use tu in product help and ordinary support. The verb usually supplies the person: Apri il file is a direct instruction without an explicit tu. Keep address consistent through a procedure. A letter or relationship that calls for Lei needs its own consistent verb and pronoun forms; do not switch merely because a sentence contains a technical term.
Use an imperative for an action label or direct instruction, and a suitable noun phrase for a topic: Esporta il file, Esportazione dei file. Do not alternate imperative and infinitive instructions within the same procedure. An infinitive can still occur naturally in an explanation, as in Per esportare il file, scegli il formato.
Use noi or a first-person plural verb when the company or support team acts. An application operation does not require a fictional human speaker. Name the component when readers need to know what failed. Prefer familiar words such as usare and provare, without replacing a precise technical term or banning utilizzare and tentare in every context.
Meaning and word choice¶
Translate the whole claim. Puoi, riesci a and sei in grado di can distinguish permission, success and ability; they are not universal substitutes. Vedere can direct someone to a reference, but it cannot replace every occurrence of fare riferimento a. Preserve a qualification that limits what a feature does: helping to protect something is not a guarantee of protection.
Keep quantities and choices exact. English any may mean one unrestricted choice, all matching objects or no object in a negative sentence. Scegli uno dei formati permits one format; Scegli uno o più formati permits several. Do not introduce “one or more” when the source requires exactly one action.
Use established short forms where they fit: app, PC, email. Choose informazioni in explanatory prose and info only where the compact, informal form suits the surface. A shorter word must still identify the same thing. Fatto a mano means handmade, not everything made by people. A collective such as corpo elettorale does not necessarily identify the same people as those who actually voted.
Keep real names, roles and objects intact. Do not turn Francis into Francesco or Francesca without a reason established by the brief. Adapt a fictional example only when its purpose and factual constraints permit it. Use interface actions to distinguish selecting, clicking and reproducing a gesture; watching a demonstration alone may not perform the required action.
People and agreement¶
Prefer wording that does not assign an unsupported gender: Ti diamo il benvenuto can replace a gendered greeting. Use chi usa il programma or a precise role when appropriate. A collective such as personale must not turn one person into a group. Retain the restriction in Chi dispone delle autorizzazioni necessarie può modificare le password; a shorter sentence must not grant permission to everyone.
For a named person, use that person's name, pronouns and professional title. Grammatical gender does not establish personal gender. Keep agreement in la persona autorizzata and le persone autorizzate, regardless of the people's identities. In new general product prose, prefer ordinary words and complete grammatical forms over improvised suffix strings. Preserve a person's own spelling and an exact quotation.
Do not remove a relevant family relationship, disability or responsibility to make a sentence generic. Persona con disabilità is not inherently pitying language. Follow the person's preferred description and the shared accessible-content guidance. Give input-specific instructions when the actual task requires them; a blanket replacement of fai clic with seleziona can change the action.
Nouns, articles and sentence structure¶
Keep established English loan nouns invariant in ordinary Italian prose: un file, due file, il server, i server. Number still affects agreement: Il file è stato eliminato and I file sono stati eliminati. Do not infer that every new specialist borrowing must follow the same pattern; check its accepted usage. Accented nouns such as città also remain unchanged in the plural.
Choose a borrowed noun's gender and article from established Italian usage: la password, l’API, il widget, l’host. Do not assign masculine gender to every foreign word or invent a physical-object versus abstract-feature rule. A category noun can clarify a name: nel programma FontLab, nel menu File. Keep exact product and interface names intact.
Adjective position can affect meaning: un vecchio amico need not describe the person's age, whereas un amico vecchio can do so. In technical phrases, retain the established term and the modifier's scope. Shorten possessives only when ownership remains clear. Il tuo file and il file di Marta cannot both become il file when the distinction matters.
Use the preposition required by the Italian construction: salva su disco, inserisci l’immagine nel documento, fai clic sul pulsante. Moving data dal database expresses its source; i dati del database expresses a relationship. Do not treat every from as one fixed preposition.
Keep conjunctions, tense and mood appropriate to the meaning. Replacing affinché with per may require restructuring the clause. Do not replace a future event, condition or hypothetical result with an asserted present fact. A clause such as se il file fosse aperto is hypothetical; se il file è aperto can test a current condition.
Messages and variables¶
Choose wording for the operation's actual state:
| Function | Example |
|---|---|
| Action label | Salva il file |
| Instruction | Salva il file. |
| In progress | Salvataggio del file in corso. |
| Completed | File salvato. |
| Failed attempt | Salvataggio del file non riuscito. |
| Current impossibility | Non è possibile salvare il file. |
A failed copy is not merely a statement that copying is unavailable. Preserve the actor or component when it distinguishes failures. Do not invent a cause, restart requirement or recovery promise. A fragment such as Memoria insufficiente works only when the surrounding interface makes the failed operation clear.
Keep everyone affected and the uncertainty in a warning: Se riavvii ora, tu e le altre persone che usano questo computer potreste perdere il lavoro non salvato. Do not turn potreste into a certain loss. A question remains a question: Vuoi continuare? Follow interface feedback for the message's function.
Check what each placeholder can contain. Non è possibile aprire il file {name}. keeps a filename separate from grammatical agreement. A person, application name or list needs its own construction. Preserve token names, format specifiers, escapes and markup; reorder only when the parser permits it. Do not assume every format called %c contains a letter.
Test counts in complete messages. 1 file eliminato and 2 file eliminati show why the invariant noun does not remove the need for agreement. 1 cartella eliminata changes gender as well. Use the product's plural-message mechanism and test zero and other supported values. See messages and variables.
Capitalization and abbreviations¶
Use sentence case for new headings and labels: Opzioni di esportazione, Salva con nome. Keep Italian weekday, month and language names lowercase: lunedì, settembre, italiano. Proper names and exact interface labels retain their spelling. Do not impose capitals on every key name or copy a supplier's legal typography into ordinary help.
Keep accents on capitals: È disponibile. An apostrophe does not replace an accent. Preserve perché, più and città; un po’ takes an apostrophe, while qual è does not. Required ASCII in a command or identifier remains literal.
Use established abbreviations sparingly: art., cfr., p., pp., ecc. Do not shorten every word by counting letters or cutting after a consonant. Unit symbols such as mm, kg, s and GB are a different category: keep their case and omit an abbreviation period. A bit and a byte are not interchangeable.
Explain an unfamiliar initialism when useful, without adding two parenthetical expansions to every occurrence. Use an established Italian equivalent when it denotes the same organization or concept. An acronym's grammatical treatment depends on what it names; a category noun can help, as in l’interfaccia API.
Punctuation, numbers and line breaks¶
Do not separate a subject from its verb with a stray comma: Il file è stato rimosso. A parenthetical clause can legitimately sit between them. A simple list normally has no comma before its final e: file, cartelle e modelli. Use a comma when the actual sentence structure needs one, rather than applying a universal ban after introductory phrases.
Use a colon for an explanation or a grammatically introduced list. Put no space before a comma, period or colon, and use normal spacing after it in prose. Decimal marks and other notation follow their own rules. Put question marks belonging to a quotation inside it, as in «Vuoi continuare?»; do not move every punctuation mark outside quotes or parentheses. Keep parentheses close to their contents and use them when they clarify the sentence.
Distinguish a range dash from a mathematical minus: pagine 3–6, −18 °C. Keep a nonbreaking space between a value and its unit or currency: 12,5 mm, 12,50 €. Use locale formatting for dynamic numbers, and preserve literal version syntax such as 1.2.0. Do not change the amount or unit while changing its notation.
Use the ellipsis character … in prose. In instructions, reproduce an existing control's punctuation exactly, including Salva con nome… when that is its label. Do not add an ellipsis to every progress message or remove one from a quoted control merely because it appears in documentation.
Keyboard wording and speech¶
Name the actual key: premi Invio, freccia su, barra spaziatrice. Explain a numeric-keypad distinction when the task needs it. Verify shortcuts, access keys and focus behavior in the target product; translated shortcut catalogs do not establish current behavior. Avoid collisions and retain platform differences such as Command versus Ctrl.
For narration, use natural Italian pronunciation and an approved reading of names. Spell an unfamiliar initialism when that makes it clearer. Read every character needed to reproduce a URL, version or command; do not omit a meaningful punto. Follow the shared audiovisual guidance for pacing, captions and visual information.