the universal

There are a few small rules for writing our name. Nothing grand, just the kind of agreement you settle once so you never have to think about it again.

The name is always lowercase. the universal. Not at the start of a sentence, not inside a menu label or a footer copyright where everything around it is capitalized. The moment it becomes capitals, it stops being our name.

How it renders

• Always lowercase. Not The Universal, not THE UNIVERSAL.
• Typeface is JetBrains Mono, weight 300.
• Letter-spacing is 0.02em.
• A non-breaking space ( ) sits between the and universal, so the name never splits across two lines.
• No italics, no decoration.

Gathered in one place, it looks like this. The whole site uses this single class.

/* src/styles/global.css */
.tu-mark {
  font-family: var(--font-mono);   /* JetBrains Mono */
  font-weight: 300;
  letter-spacing: 0.02em;
  text-transform: none;            /* never capitalize — the load-bearing line */
  font-style: normal;
  color: var(--color-text);
}

One trap

The name often lands in places that render in capitals: the small label above a menu, the copyright at the foot of a page. Those carry text-transform: uppercase, so if you do nothing, the name gets dragged up with them and becomes THE UNIVERSAL.

That is why .tu-mark carries text-transform: none. To place the name there, you only wrap it.

<span class="meta">© 2026 <span class="tu-mark">the&nbsp;universal</span></span>

The context around it can be all capitals; the name stays lowercase. The same holds in running text, where you write the universal the same way.

That is the whole rule. Quietly, always the same shape. That is how we set our name.