The following documents form the RFC Style Guide.
RFC 7322: "RFC Style Guide"
Quick Reference: New RFC Style Guide changes authors can implement now
This is a quick reference list, but it is not a replacement for
the RFC Style Guide -
please review the entire RFC.
- Add a Table of Contents (ToCs are now required regardless of page length)
- Reorder the Acknowledgements (if applicable), Contributors (if applicable), and Authors' Addresses so they appear in this order at the very end of the document
- Include the draft string of the Internet-Draft being referenced
Internet-Drafts for examples)
- Include URLs for the RFC info pages in RFC references (see Referencing
RFCs for examples)
- Use the English short name listed by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency for country names in Authors' Addresses. See the ISO's "Online Browing Platform (OBP)" at <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/>
The RPC is manually fixing these items, while the tools do not yet provide
Note that some of these fixes occur in the final
stages of the publication process; i.e., the changes are applied to the
.nroff file to get the required .txt output.
Web Portion of the Style Guide
Status of This Memo Boilerplate - "Status of
This Memo" text as defined by RFC 5741
Abbreviations List - Expansions of abbreviations (and acronyms) in
Terms List - Table of decisions on consistent usage in RFCs
- IAB-specific format for RFCs in the IAB stream.
Resources for Authors - Provides some writing tips and resources for authors
Reference Entries for RFCs - Available in
TXT and in XML
(for use with xml2rfc).
Reference Entries for STDs and BCPs - Available for the
STD subseries (TXT) and the
BCP subseries (TXT).
Old materials (replaced by the documents above):
This page was last updated on 20 February 2015.