Digital File and Folder Naming

Digital file naming has been a hot topic since the majority of office desks have included a computer. There are many opinions and some facts that keep us all guessing about what to do when naming our files. All I can say is what I’ve come to learn through my own opinions and my experiences.

My primary opinion is - keep it simple and safe. And that means, use only letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. There are some opinions that underscores are even a no-no. I haven’t found that to be an issue. The ‘do not do’ of file naming is - no special characters other than hyphens and underscores AND no spaces or periods (only before the file extension).

The primary issue with file naming is not necessarily how the files live on an individuals computer it is more about transferring files via email, FTP, web download, compression, etc. What happens here is that, at times, the file names clash with the internet application coding.

But there is a good chance that your file will transfer without any problem if you ignore the naming rules. That’s just how it is sometimes. It is sometimes hit-and-miss. But why take the chance?

There is one rule that you should never ignore and that’s the use a period (.) in your file name. Except for the period right before the file extension. Periods are universally recognized in coding languages as stops or separators. So more often than not, any character after a period in your file name will be ignored resulting in the truncation of the file name. This could lead to problems in certain applications recognizing the file or some files with links looking for the a file with the original name.

These rules apply to folder naming as well.


Keep it simple, as shown here:

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