Portuguese (Brazil) style guide

Use Brazilian Portuguese for this edition. The catalog key pt identifies this page; it does not make Brazilian usage the default for every Portuguese-speaking audience. Use Portuguese for Portugal for that edition. Shared grammar and message guidance below applies to both where no regional difference is specified.

Follow the common registers, mechanics and localization review. Write natural Portuguese while preserving the source’s facts, conditions and required actions. An informal tone does not authorize changing a product capability.

Address and agreement

For broadly addressed Brazilian product help, use você with third-person verb forms: Você pode salvar o arquivo. An imperative can omit the pronoun: Salve o arquivo. This is the house default for this edition, not a claim that every Brazilian audience uses the same form of address. Follow a more specific brief where needed, keeping pronouns and verb forms consistent.

Omit repeated subject pronouns when the actor remains clear. Keep a subject or possessive when it distinguishes the reader from another person: seu arquivo and o arquivo de outra pessoa are not interchangeable. A sentence about an administrator’s permission must not become a promise that every reader can act.

Use grammatical agreement with the noun: o arquivo selecionado, a pasta selecionada. Grammatical gender does not establish a person’s gender. A pessoa responsável can avoid an unnecessary assumption; replacing one person with a equipe may change the actor or responsibility. Preserve roles, number and obligations, and use a real person’s own pronouns. See accessible content.

Regional vocabulary and exact actions

Use arquivo, salvar, tela, senha, usuário and configurações for the corresponding Brazilian concepts. Check the glossary and the actual interface: these examples do not rename an existing control. Aba can name a browser tab; use the approved product term for another kind of tab.

European forms reach Brazilian catalogs through shared translation memories. Write excluir, aplicativo, padrão, controle, registrar, caractere and baixar, not eliminar, aplicação, predefinição, controlo, registar, carácter and transferir. Avoid verbs coined from English, such as deletar, resetar and checar; excluir, redefinir and verificar say the same.

Spell by the 1990 Orthographic Agreement, mandatory in Brazil since 2016: ideia, frequência, autoajuste, autossalvamento, pré-visualização. The Academia Brasileira de Letras records the current spellings in its orthographic vocabulary (VOLP).

Prefer familiar wording when it preserves the action. Escolher can describe choosing a color; selecionar can describe selecting an object. They are not interchangeable merely to add variety. Likewise, acessar a page, visitar a site and obtaining permission to access a file can describe different things. Keep technical terms precise.

Retain instructions that make a task work. If a messaging interface requires Enter to send, Digite a mensagem e pressione Enter para enviá-la. preserves both actions. Escreva uma mensagem does not. Follow interface actions for the actual input method; do not remove a required gesture to make wording device-neutral.

Do not narrow datas especiais to birthdays, turn an absent person into an offline person, or replace a named activity with a different sport without an explicit adaptation brief. A setup instruction that says there are more steps must retain them. Marketing may reshape an image or rhythm; it must keep amounts, audience, limitations and claims.

Articles, prepositions and modifiers

Choose the article for the intended reference: Selecione um arquivo permits a choice; selecione o arquivo identifies one. A definite article does not always mean every item in a system. In Brazilian usage, an article before a possessive can vary with the construction and register; do not add or remove it mechanically.

Use the preposition required by the Portuguese relationship. Lista de arquivos and lista dos arquivos selecionados have different scopes. A sequence of English nouns must be understood before translation, not simply reversed. A manager for one server and a manager for several servers need different wording when that distinction matters.

Adjectives often follow nouns, but position can change emphasis or meaning. Um novo arquivo and um arquivo novo are not a universal before/after correction pair. Preserve agreement when modifiers are separated from their nouns.

Choose the article and gender of a borrowed term from established usage and the approved term. Product names are not universally masculine. An explicit noun can clarify a reference: o aplicativo FontLab. Do not add o before an arbitrary product-name variable without knowing its possible values.

Tense, mood and message state

Use the tense and aspect of the actual event. O arquivo foi salvo. reports completion; o arquivo será salvo predicts it. A future guarantee must not become a statement that something is already enabled. Preserve conditions and uncertainty when simplifying clauses.

Brazilian progress text commonly uses a gerund: Salvando o arquivo. Portugal commonly uses A guardar o ficheiro. Neither construction proves completion. Prefer a direct future form when it says enough; do not declare every future progressive ungrammatical. Duration or an action in progress at a future time can be meaningful.

Keep a subjunctive where the meaning requires it: Se o arquivo estiver aberto, feche-o antes de continuar. Rewriting a sentence can simplify its structure, but a preference for the present tense does not erase a hypothetical condition.

Meaning	Brazilian wording
Action label	Salvar arquivo
Instruction	Salve o arquivo.
In progress	Salvando o arquivo.
Completed	O arquivo foi salvo.
Failed attempt	Não foi possível salvar o arquivo.
Present limitation	Não é possível salvar o arquivo.

A warning must retain everyone affected: Se você reiniciar agora, você e outras pessoas que usam este computador poderão perder o trabalho não salvo. Keep the possible consequence as a possibility. Do not add a cause, recovery promise or restart instruction without product evidence.

Interface labels

A command in a menu or on a button takes the infinitive: Salvar como…, Selecionar tudo. Adobe, Qt and the Brazilian Windows interface do the same. An instruction addressed to the reader takes the imperative: Arraste o arquivo aqui. A checkbox names the behavior it turns on, with an infinitive or a noun phrase; a panel title is a noun phrase without an article. A tooltip that says what a control does uses the third person: Abre uma nova aba.

macOS capitalizes each main word of a menu command (Salvar Como…); Adobe and Qt use sentence case. This edition uses sentence case, as the capitalization section below says. A compact command can drop the article before its object (Adicionar âncora), but it keeps prepositions and contractions: Alinhar à esquerda, Opções de exportação.

Messages and placeholders

A short message such as Memória insuficiente may be enough when context supplies the rest. Retain verbs that carry important timing, agency or conditions. A completed failure and a present limitation are different states, even if an old translation memory uses one phrase for both. See interface feedback.

Check what each variable can contain. Não foi possível abrir o arquivo {name}. assumes a single file name. It cannot safely receive an arbitrary product name or a plural list without reviewing the complete sentence. Use full messages and realistic substituted values, following messages and variables.

A variable that stands for a noun hides its gender and number. {name} foi excluído fails for a feminine value. Name the kind of thing when the application guarantees it (A camada {name} foi excluída), or choose wording that does not agree: Não foi possível excluir {name}. Do not put o, a, do or na before a value of unknown gender, and do not write excluído(a).

For Brazilian Portuguese, CLDR and Qt (locale pt_BR) select the singular form for 0 and 1 and the plural form from 2: 0 arquivo, 1 arquivo, 2 arquivos. A singular form therefore must read correctly with 0 and must show the number instead of the word um. For European Portuguese both select the singular for 1 only.

Keep parser identifiers, argument names, format specifiers, escapes and markup intact. Translate a human-readable placeholder only when its contract permits it. Reorder runtime arguments only if the format supports reordering. A character placeholder is not necessarily a letter; do not infer its allowed values from an old catalog.

Capitalization and abbreviations

Use sentence case for new headings and labels: Opções de exportação. Keep accents on capitals: ÁREA, Últimos arquivos. Preserve the exact spelling, case and punctuation of an existing interface label when referring to it. English title case is not a rule for new Portuguese strings.

Use established abbreviations only when the audience understands them. Keep accents and periods in forms such as pág. and séc. Do not invent a truncation by deleting arbitrary letters or prepositions. Symbols such as mm, GB and Hz retain their defined case and do not take abbreviation periods or plural endings.

In Brazilian prose, a lowercase s can mark the plural of an initialism: PCs, without an apostrophe. Keep approved names and identifiers exact. Explain an unfamiliar abbreviation at first useful mention; do not expand a familiar file format on every screen or invent its full name. Use established local equivalents where relevant to the audience.

Punctuation and technical notation

Do not put a space before a comma, period, question mark or exclamation mark. A complete question can be Quer continuar? Avoid doubled spaces after sentence punctuation. In a simple list, a comma before the final e is normally unnecessary; clauses may require different punctuation.

Use “…” for quoted prose in this Brazilian edition and ‘…’ for an inner quotation. Preserve straight quotation marks where code or input requires them. Follow the common mechanics for interface labels, retaining an ellipsis that is part of the actual label. Complete sentences take a period; compact labels normally do not. Determine a string’s role and runtime context instead of copying source punctuation blindly.

Use … for an ellipsis. Distinguish a word hyphen - from a range dash – and a mathematical minus −. Examples are páginas 4–6 and −18 °C. The negative value has no space after the minus and a nonbreaking space before the unit. Required input syntax keeps its own characters.

Numbers and formats

Use a decimal comma in ordinary Brazilian prose: 12,5 mm. Group thousands with a period: 1.234,5. Keep quantities explicit in technical instructions. Use a nonbreaking space where a value and its unit must stay together, including web documentation; verify the rendered output. Write a percentage without a space, 25%, as CLDR and the Brazilian platform interfaces format it. An input field may require a different syntax.

Preserve the numeric value when translating large-number names. 1,000,000,000 in English is um bilhão in Brazil and mil milhões in Portugal. Thus 16,000,000,000 becomes 16 bilhões in Brazil. Do not convert names by spelling alone. Use digits when they make a large value easier to check.

A Brazilian-real amount can be R$ 12,50; identify the currency when readers could confuse it. A written date such as 13 de setembro de 2026 avoids ambiguous numeric ordering. Use the application’s locale formatter for dynamic values. Versions, identifiers and timestamps keep their defined syntax; a version is not a decimal quantity. See names and formats.

Keyboard wording and narration

Use key names and shortcuts from the actual platform and keyboard layout. Enter, Ctrl and seta para baixo are examples, not a universal mapping. Distinguish a shortcut from an access key; a supplier’s ampersand or ribbon syntax does not define every product. Test collisions and focus behavior in the interface. An access key sits on a letter of the Portuguese label (E&xcluir, A&juda) and never on an accented letter or ç. Modifier names stay in English on both platforms: Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Command, Option.

For narration, use natural Brazilian pronunciation and approved product-name pronunciation. Do not enforce one accent across all Brazilian speakers. Read necessary characters in an address or identifier when the listener must reproduce it. A pause can express prose punctuation but cannot replace a mathematical operation. Use the shared audiovisual guidance for captions, timing and visual information.

FontLab terminology decisions (2026-10-04)

Follow the canonical FontLab glossary, including its approval status and contextual notes. The current choices are:

Concept	Wording
OpenType lookup	procedimento
Fusion, using the fallback Welder	Soldador
FontAudit, visible name	FontAudit
Pin, a named point in an element	pino

For OpenType lookup, the default is the translation of procedure. Retain a different term only with strong OpenType-specific evidence; the explicit German, French, Polish and Russian decisions take precedence. Ordinary search, dictionary lookup and code keywords are separate senses. Preserve literal lookup, lookupflag, LookupList and identifiers in code. Keep individual rules distinct from the procedures that group them.

Use the FontAudit name above in visible interface text and prose; preserve FontAudit in code and identifiers. In non-Latin scripts it is a phonetic transliteration, including Chinese. A proposed glossary entry remains proposed; this table does not confer native-team approval.

Keep marked and unmarked menu labels consistent after accounting for Qt mnemonic & and appended shortcuts. In Dimensions and Glyph Window preferences, aim for labels no longer than 120% of the source; preserve meaning when that target is impractical. Omit redundant font or colour wording when context supplies it. TTH options may omit the verb “use” and abbreviate TrueType hinting as TTH. Help may be longer, but quoted interface labels must match the final UI.

FontLab Rapid tool

FontLab names this tool Rapid. The name stays recognizable in the interface and Quick Help; it does not mean an ordinary fast or quick action. Use the canonical TS spelling and translate the surrounding grammar, as in Desenho com Rapid. The contrast classifications containing English rapid use the ordinary adjective instead. See the localization guide for the current terminology and source-version checks.

Quick Help: control names and verified behavior

Use the label from the control's own canonical TS context. In metric fields, both Width and Advance width are Largura de avanço; explain width("spec") as largura de avanço and keep the expression unchanged. Ordinary geometric widths remain largura. Refer to the actual Espaçar automaticamente button and Painel de glifo.

Keep Rapid lembra o estado and Ponto fora da curva in references to those controls. The stem measurement tool is Haste. The separate brush-node thickness tool is Espessura; use it for local brush thickness and rotation references. Use Gráfico do eixo, Coordenadas do usuário and Variações for their own controls. Extrapolation applies to both static instances and the Variações panel.

Ativar todos and Desativar todos act on all anchors or pins in the list immediately; they are not toggles for selected items. Preserve the current or draft source's supported conditions. Scribble generates open contours within the filled glyph regions; do not promise one result for each closed input contour.

The blend-preview selector displays literal text and table choices. Keep these runtime labels unchanged and explain the two display modes in Portuguese. Do not describe unrelated single-frame or waterfall modes. Stroke thickness can be espessura do traço; a mention of stroke weight does not automatically refer to the Weight axis.

Use Meia-esquadria for the DlgExpand field and Limite de mitra for the stroke-limit concept. The limit is a factor of stroke width or expansion distance. Keep Alterar UPM and Dimensionar glifos e métricas para o novo valor de UPM as control labels. Expanded unidades por eme and pixels por eme remain valid in explanations; the CBDT dialog also uses expanded wording in its current catalog.

The script selector displays ICU names such as Latin directly. Its Automático and Padrão options are translated separately. Preserve literal instance names such as Thin, Regular, Bold and Black in axis examples.

Use Informações da fonte › Dimensões da família › Arredondar coordenadas for the current per-font setting, and Contorno › Coordenadas › Arredondar for rounding selected points. Legacy Arredondar ao editar opens an information dialog and is hidden in the current menu. Verify rounding scope before promising that every point, guide and anchor will change.

Inactive dialogs still need factual help. Default Scripts has copied Replace/Find tooltips and unconnected Cancel/OK controls. Describe those controls without claiming that they apply a default script or change features. Check quoted crash-report messages against their entire owning TS translation.

Keep procedimento for an individual OpenType lookup and Regras for the corresponding panel. A panel title does not rename every item it contains. The legacy Lookups dialog embeds the panel; its OK button closes the dialog without returning a checked subset to include.

Use Kerning bilateral for the class type, with the first/left and second/right sides. Kerning matching works across masters of the current font. The dialog's message describes flattening, copying the indicated master's classes, equalizing pairs and compressing them again.

Restaurar padrões resets the preferences set while preserving control visibility. Redefinir para o padrão in the sample-text dialog restores the selected entry's original contents, using built-in defaults when there is no selected entry. Keep this separate from resetting the files list.

Preserve Marcar todas in the measurement chooser and Marcar todos in the kerning filter. The glyph-name synonym label is singular in several dialogs but plural in DlgSetKerningClass. Match each owning catalog entry. The master-location dialog's Aplicar a selector offers glyph scopes; its choices do not include elements.

View controls, runtime values and font naming

Use Visualização for the View panel and Exibir for the main menu. The panel names its measurements Hastes and Tensão; a font dimension can instead be Tensão da curva. Match each owning context. Legacy references to removed measurement preferences still require the coordinated source audit.

Pointer coordinates use unidades da fonte. UPM is the number of those units per em. Keep expanded explanations where useful, and use UPM when quoting the actual field. Preserve literal Plain, Italic and Oblique in the runtime slope selector and literal ICU script names such as Latin; translated designer samples do not establish runtime labels.

The Fonts panel naming commands change metadata of the selected fonts. Describe the actual family, style and style-link fields they update. Mostrar fontes and Lista de fontes open the font chooser. They do not clear filtering or change the panel view mode. Use Mapa de fontes for the owning FontBrowser title and Galeria for the Gallery panel. Preserve Font/Glyph window flag names rather than borrowing class or kerning flags.

In the Features panel, Adicionar tags and Adicionar tags virtuais control inclusion of glyph-tag-derived classes during compilation. They do not insert OpenType feature-tag placeholders into the editor.

Glyph metrics, runtime choices and axis editors

Use Automedição in the GW_Measurement controls; the View panel instead uses Hastes and Tensão. GW_Transform uses Espelhamento horizontal and Espelhamento vertical where PanelTransform uses Inversão. The glyph widget's Info. title comes from its owning main-window command.

UPM defines the scale of font coordinates. Drawing coordinates can be fractional when coordinate rounding is off; do not imply that a UPM value forces integer coordinates. Espaçar automaticamente follows the spacing method chosen in preferences, rather than always using optical spacing.

Keep literal Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic in the runtime style-link selectors. The OT glyph-class selector translates its choices as Simples, Ligatura and Marca. Preserve the different alternate-rename labels: Renomear também alternativas in GW_Glyph and Renomear também alternativos in InspectorGlyph.

Use Selecionar posição variável, Copiar receita para mestras, Camadas inativas como aramado and Cor da mestra for their own controls. Pré-visualizar par and Compactar em kerning de classes belong to the Kerning panel. Adicionar procedimento and Remover procedimento operate on lookups even where an inherited English heading incorrectly says feature.

The axis-graph popup edits point coordinates or master locations. Its Escala option scales graph coordinates and the other master/instance locations when the main master location changes; it does not display percentages. Axis-instance menu choices come from Informações da fonte › Eixos › Instâncias de eixo.

Main-menu references

MainWindow names the Font Map command Mapa da fonte, while the FontBrowser title is Mapa de fontes. Use Janela acoplável, Acrescentar glifos, Unir seleção, Equalizar, Destacar serifas and Casar edições for those commands. The Variations preference section is also Casar edições; do not quote the obsolete Synchronize in matching masters heading.

The View panel is Visualização and the main menu is Exibir. A reference to both needs both names. Use Hastes and Tensão for the actual View-panel measurement toggles; the expanded Automedição names belong to other contexts. Status do Superempurrão is the preference label. Preserve ordinary nós-chave in explanations rather than forcing an unrelated UI adjective.

The Add Variation dialog is Adicionar variação. The MainWindow sticker command is Retângulo, while other sticker controls use Quadrado. The brush toolbox uses Pincel apagador; Bar_Brush uses Pincel de apagar. Use Haste for stem measurement and Espessura for brush-node thickness. The English Thickness caption belongs to the brush-node tool; its internal name differs from the stem tool. Check the owning control before translating.

Use Ver barra lateral and Repetir / texto personalizado for the Preview controls. Use Editar entre for the main-menu submenu and Grade, guias e hints for the preferences page. The kerning-audit threshold is Auditoria de kerning › Distância mínima in the Spacing preferences.

Metrics, copied expressions and preference contexts

The Métricas panel edits advance widths and sidebearings. It does not edit kerning. The Pairs import control opens Abrir lista de pares or Abrir amostras, according to the current mode. Its context selectors use Maiúsc., Minúsc., Versal. and Dígito, while the mode selector uses Auto. A MeasureWidget represents the view option named by its runtime label; it is not a glyph-values editor.

The Pins copy buttons copy expressions to same-named anchors in other masters. The main button copies Y when the separate X button is visible; otherwise it copies both. Alt includes both expressions. The X button copies X, with Alt adding Y. Existing numeric anchor coordinates remain unchanged; missing anchors are cloned. Describe this separately from copying glyph metrics.

For centered TTH links, enabled builds links from both sidebearings towards the center; disabled builds them from left to right. Do not preserve the reversed states in inherited help. Use Fator de precisão da alavanca for its current preference tooltip. Expanded unit explanations remain valid; pointer coordinates use unidades da fonte, not units of UPM.

Use Fonte de espaço reservado for the Font Window preference and Data de modificação for the Age caption. Caption size and curvature selectors display auto; preserve that value rather than borrowing Automático from another selector. Keep nós-chave where it accurately describes key-node behavior. The actual width of a text canvas remains a geometric width.

Grid ratio fields use Declive; the angle field uses Inclinação. The grid's Atração forte ou suave à grade tooltip differs from the main menu's Ajustar label. Spacing preferences offer Óptico, Neural, Apertado and Personalizado. Preserve literal FontLab JSON (VFJ) format names and unsupported legacy Background layer-name references until their source/control audit is resolved.

Use Preview's Espelhar horizontalmente, Espelhar verticalmente, Preencher prévia, Prévia do alongamento, Opções de conteúdo and Mostrar nomes dos glifos in quoted references. The old autosave-folder controls are absent from the current Save property view; do not infer their behavior from mixed first-save/autosave descriptions.

Preview, stroke caps and TrueType hinting

Use the owning Preview captions: Alongamento (%), Prévia do alongamento, Ver barra lateral, Repetir / texto personalizado and Definir sistema de escrita do texto. Match panel titles and stacking commands to their own contexts. Excluído do cálculo das métricas describes nonspacing behavior; it does not require zero advance width. Keep valid expanded unit explanations.

Use Junção em mitra and Limite de mitra for the stroke controls; retain Meia-esquadria where DlgExpand actually shows that caption. Fixed-angle caps use Ângulo fixo da extremidade; round caps use Tensão da extremidade. Other cap-shape controls use Forma da extremidade. Preserve shortcut tokens.

Use Vínculo simples, Vínculo duplo, Alinhar ponto, Painel de código and Painel de zoom in their owning TTH contexts. Redefinir pixels por eme clears the stem adjustment programs and refreshes displayed values. Triple hints simulate PostScript triple hints to maintain equal stem distances across sizes. Keep literal runtime style names and glyphset identities when no translated runtime value has been verified. These review notes await final integration.

Repeated help and runtime names

The welcome-page encoding is Latino simples, as translated through the FontLabCategories context. Preserve literal Plain, Italic and Oblique in the runtime slope selector. Explain style-linked italics as linked to other fonts, not as an alternative to other fonts.

Font units can be fractional; do not describe every font unit as an integer. Keep the actual Grade, guias e hints, Casar edições, Cor da mestra, Inverter prévia and Detectar nós gênios captions in their own contexts. The advance-width controls use Largura de avanço even for the short English Width caption; ordinary bounding-box widths use Largura.

Plain language (linguagem simples)

Brazil’s Lei nº 15.263/2025 created the Política Nacional de Linguagem Simples for public administration, and ABNT NBR ISO 24495-1:2024 adopts the international plain-language standard with Brazilian examples. Neither binds FontLab. We follow the same practice because Brazilian readers increasingly expect it. It applies to all help and support text. It does not override the terminology decisions above, the registers or the exact labels of the interface.

Put first what the reader must know or do, and the reasons after it. Write steps in the order the reader performs them. Place a warning before the step that can cause damage, not after it. Give each sentence one idea, and turn an exception wedged into the middle of a sentence into a sentence of its own. Keep the familiar subject-verb-object order, and state a condition before the action it governs.

Use the verb rather than a noun made from it: efetuar a exportação, realizar a verificação and proceder à instalação become exportar, verificar and instalar. Cut bureaucratic formulas such as vimos por meio desta, no que tange a, outrossim and supracitado. Replace o mesmo used as a pronoun with the noun or an ordinary pronoun.

Avoid gerundismo, the empty future with estar plus a gerund: vamos estar enviando becomes vamos enviar. Progress messages such as Salvando o arquivo. are a different construction and stay; see tense, mood and message state.

Name the actor when it matters to the reader. A licença será ativada leaves open who acts; Ative a licença or O aplicativo FontLab ativa a licença says it. A completion message such as O arquivo foi salvo. stays passive because the actor is obvious.

Explain an unfamiliar abbreviation or term at its first useful mention, as capitalization and abbreviations describes, and keep any name the reader must find on screen. Use one word for one action throughout a text; regional vocabulary lists the preferred verbs.

A simpler sentence must make the same claim. Pode ter falhado stays a possibility. Do not add a cause, deadline or condition the source lacks, and do not drop apenas, exceto or até to save words.

Before	After
Informamos que a exportação da fonte variável não poderá ser efetuada caso as mestras não sejam compatíveis.	Não é possível exportar a fonte variável se as mestras não forem compatíveis.
Estaremos realizando a análise do seu arquivo e retornaremos o contato em breve.	Vamos analisar seu arquivo e responder em breve.
Copie a receita (a não ser que o glifo seja composto) para todas as mestras.	Se o glifo não for composto, copie a receita para todas as mestras.
É recomendável que seja efetuada uma cópia da fonte antes de proceder à exclusão dos pares de kerning.	Recomendamos salvar uma cópia da fonte antes de excluir os pares de kerning.