Trademarks
Include a trademark symbol (® or ™) only at the first instance of a trademarked term (both ours and the trademarks of others) in the body copy of a page (do not include a symbol if the first instance is in a header). Trademarks we commonly use include:
- Rackspace® Hosting
- Racker™
- Fanatical Support®
- OpenStack®
- RackConnect®
- Cloud Sites™
- Cloud Files™
- CloudU®
- Jungle Disk®
- NetApp®
- Red Hat®
- Ubuntu®
Terms to Avoid
For legal reasons, avoid using the following terms whenever possible, unless there is a very specific reason to do otherwise. For more details, see https://one.rackspace.com/display/legal/NO-Nos.
- Secure. Use this word judiciously, and only with qualification.
- Expert. Use this adjective only when there is substantive evidence that it’s true—for example, it’s OK to say we’re Microsoft experts, because our Microsoft specialists are required to have industry certifications that prove their expertise.
- Fanatical or fanatically. Using this term outside of the context of “Fanatical Support” waters down our trademark and makes it harder to defend.
- Ensure. This term can have legal implications. Preferred use is “help ensure.”
- Industry leading, the best, the biggest. These claims require substantiation.
- Never, always. A customer can construe this language as a guarantee. Use softer language, instead—for example, don’t say “we’ll never read your email,” but do say “we don’t read your email.”
- Competitive information. Outdated information poses a major legal risk.
- Partner. This word has a specific legal meaning. Don’t use it generically to refer to a typical customer relationship.
- Guarantee. Only use this word when it’s backed by a legal guarantee, such as our 100% Network Uptime Guarantee.
For readability, avoid these words and phrases whenever possible:
- In order. Omit this unnecessary phrase from your writing—it negatively impacts readability and is unnecessarily wordy.
- Utilize. This word is stodgy and hard to translate. Just say “use” instead.
- Prepositional phrases. For example, instead of, “Save time through automation of time-consuming tasks,” say, “Save time by automating time-consuming tasks.”