Editor style guide

    This page describes the grammar and writing style used throughout the Godot editor. Following this style guide will help your contribution get merged faster since there will be fewer review steps required.

    Writing style

    • Try to keep sentences short. This makes it more likely that their translations will be short as well, which is a good thing to avoid UI bugs.
    • Use contractions. For example, use “isn’t” instead of “is not”. An exception to this rule can be made when you specifically want to emphasize one of the contraction’s words.
    • Use double quotes in messages () instead of simple quotes (). Double quotes should be used to quote user input, file paths and possibly other things depending on the context.

    See also

    Try to follow the in addition to the guidelines outlined above.

    Capitalize text in buttons and menu actions:

    • Good: Open Editor Data Folder
    • Bad: Open editor data folder
    • Good: Editor Settings…

    Inspector sections

    In general, don’t create sections that contain less than 3 items. Sections that contain few items make it difficult to navigate the inspector, while missing the benefits of using sections such as folding.

    There are some valid exceptions for this, such as material features in SpatialMaterial.

    This advice also applies to the Project Settings and Editor Settings.

    Enum properties that noticeably impact performance should have a performance hint associated. The hint should refer to the absolute performance impact, rather than being relative to the other options provided in the enum. Here are some examples taken from the Godot editor:

    • Screen-space antialiasing: Disabled (Fastest), FXAA (Fast)
    • MSAA quality: Disabled (Fastest), 2x (Fast), 4x (Average), 8x (Slow), 16x (Slower)
    • DirectionalLight mode: Orthogonal (Fast), PSSM 2 Splits (Average), PSSM 4 Splits (Slow)
    • Fastest, Faster, Fast, Average, Slow, Slower, Slowest

    Their usage doesn’t have to be contiguous. For example, you can use only “Fast” and “Slow” from the list above.

    If you’re adding a new enum, its values should be ordered from the fastest option to the slowest option.

    Tooltips

    Consider adding tooltips whenever the action performed by a button or menu action isn’t obvious. You can also provide additional context or highlight caveats in the tooltip.

    You can do this by calling on the Control-based node in question. If the tooltip is particularly long (more than ~80 characters), wrap it over several lines by adding line breaks using .

    • Good: Computes global illumination for the selected GIProbe.
    • Bad: Compute global illumination for the selected GIProbe.