# Content format Dates, numbers, names, counts, and what happens when something does not fit. > Part of the [Konjo design language](../konjo-design-language.md). The laws in the spine > apply here unless this chapter contradicts them. Formatting decisions get made per-screen by whoever is building it, and that is how one app ends up showing "2 days ago", "Aug 20", "20/08/2026" and "2026-08-20T14:00:00Z" on four adjacent surfaces. These are settled here so they stop being decisions. ## Dates and times **Choose by how the person will use the fact.** | Situation | Format | Example | |---|---|---| | Something upcoming, within a week | Weekday and time | `Thu 6:30pm` | | Something upcoming, further out | Date and time | `Sep 4, 6:30pm` | | Something upcoming with **no time of day** | Date alone, no filler | `Sep 4` | | Something that just happened, under an hour | Relative | `12 min ago` | | Something that happened today or yesterday | Named day and time | `Yesterday 7:15pm` | | Something older | Absolute date | `Aug 20` | | Older than the current year | Date with year | `Aug 20, 2025` | **A date with no time is written as a date, never padded to look like one.** A birthday, a test date, a due date, a trial expiry — none of these has a clock, and every "upcoming" row above carried one until round 8 needed four date-only fields on one screen. Never write `Sep 4, 12:00am`, `Sep 4 (all day)`, or `Sep 4 —`. - **Relative time stops at "yesterday".** "23 days ago" makes a person do arithmetic to recover a date they could have just been shown. - **Never both.** "Aug 20 (2 days ago)" is two answers to one question. - **Times are local to the reader** and lowercase — `6:30pm`, not `6:30 PM` or `18:30`. - **A range collapses what repeats**: `Thu 6:30–7:30pm`, `Sep 4–6`. - **Absolute, always, for anything with consequence.** A waiver signature, a promotion date, a payment — those show the **full date including the year**, `Aug 22, 2026`, even in the current year. The table above drops the year for ordinary dates because the reader supplies it from context; a record is read later, out of context, sometimes years later, and a date without a year stops being a record. ## Numbers - **Counts are plain integers** up to 999, then abbreviated: `1.2k`, `14k`. - **A badge count caps at 99+.** The exact number stopped mattering long before that, and the dot has a fixed size. - **Money always shows currency and two decimals**: `$45.00`, never `$45`. A price that changes shape between rows is a price people distrust. - **Percentages are whole numbers** unless the fraction is the point. `73%`, not `73.2%`. - **A percent delta needs a base of at least 10** (ten dollars, for money). Off a smaller base one unit of movement swings the figure by double digits — “+3100% vs 1” reads as a bug, not a trend. Show the absolute change instead: “+31 vs 1”. In code: `formatYoyDelta` in Studio's `homeDashboard.ts`. - **Zero is written, not hidden.** "0 students" beats an empty cell, which reads as a bug. - **Never a decimal on something uncountable.** "4.5 classes" is not a thing. ## Durations Time *at* something, as opposed to time *since* something. - **Months up to two years, then years and months**: `14 months`, `2 years 3 months`, `5 years`. Never `1.2 years`, never `427 days`. - **Under a month, use weeks**: `3 weeks`. Under a week, the app almost never needs a duration — use a date. If what you actually want is *how long has this been sitting*, that is [dwell](#dwell--how-long-this-has-been-sitting), not a duration, and it has its own rules. - **Round down, never up.** Someone at a rank for 13 months and 29 days has been there 13 months; rounding up overstates a fact people care about. - **Unknown is a legitimate value** and is rendered as such, not as zero. A student who trained elsewhere before joining has an unknown time at rank, and `Unknown` is the honest answer — this is the case [content missing](#empty-and-unknown) exists for. ## Dwell — how long this has been sitting A **third** kind of time, and the one every queue in Studio needs: leads, dunning, sub requests, the at-risk list, the waiver chase. Not time *at* something (a duration — an achievement) and not time *since* an event (relative time — which stops at "yesterday"). Dwell is a **debt**: how long a thing has been waiting for a person to act on it. - **Always days, plainly.** `Today` · `1 day` · `13 days` · `47 days` · `90+ days`. - **Never weeks or months.** Applying the duration rules above to a dwell renders a 13-day stall as "1 week" — because durations round down — which understates exactly the fact the screen exists to surface. A duration rounds down because overstating time-at-rank flatters someone; a dwell must never round down, because understating a stall hides work. - **Never relative phrasing.** "13 days ago" makes a person do arithmetic (see above); "13 days" is the answer they wanted. - **One format at every age**, so a column of them sorts by eye. A format that changes shape at day 7 makes the column unscannable, which is the one thing it is for. - **Cap the display, not the value.** Past 90 days write `90+ days` and keep sorting on the real number. - **Dwell is never a colour on its own.** Whether a number of days is a warning is an SLA question, which is a [product fact](../product-facts.md), not a palette one. ## Pluralisation Write both forms; never `student(s)`, never `1 students`. For zero, prefer words over the digit where the sentence allows: "No classes this week" beats "0 classes this week" in prose, while a stat tile keeps the numeral. ## Names and people - **A person is their full name** the first time and in any list. Not "A. Torres", not a username. - **Initials are two characters**, first and last. One name gives one initial. - **Never truncate a name mid-word.** If it does not fit, the layout is wrong — a name is the one string a person will always notice being mangled. - **Honorifics come from the art**: sensei, sifu, and whatever the dojo's style uses. Konjo is multi-style; do not hardcode one tradition's title into a shared component. See [rank](rank.md). ## Truncation **Truncation is not a layout strategy.** It is what happens when a layout already failed. - **Never truncate**: a person's name, a belt rank, an error message, a price, a date, a primary action's label. - **May truncate at two lines**: a post body, a description, a note — with the full text one tap away. - **May truncate at one line**: a secondary metadata line where the leading words carry the meaning. - **If it does not fit, it reflows.** A title wraps to three lines and then steps down a type size; it does not get an ellipsis. - **Ellipsis at the end, never the middle**, except for a filename where the extension is the useful part. Combined with text scaling: whatever you test at 100%, retest at 200%, where every one of these gets harder. See [accessibility](accessibility.md). ## Empty and unknown - **Missing optional data shows nothing** — no "—", no "N/A", no empty label. The row is shorter. - **Missing required data is an error**, not a dash. If a class has no time, that is a bug the screen should surface, not smooth over. - **"Unknown" is only correct when unknown-ness is the fact** — an unrecognised belt from a visiting student, for instance. ## Lists of things - **Two items join with "and"**: `Kata and Footwork`. Three or more use commas with a final "and". - **Long lists cut at three and count the rest**: `Ana, Marcus, Priya and 4 others`. - **Order by what the reader is looking for** — soonest first for events, most recent first for a feed, alphabetical only when there is no better answer.