“Calls to Action” or “Call to Actions?”

This one goes out to all you buzzword-loving, jargon-spewing, unearned-confidence-having marketing “professionals.” You know who you are. And if you’re feeling attacked right now, know that it pleases me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to bite my tongue in a meeting when someone with a fancy title and a large bank account uses the wrong term to describe even the most common elements of a piece of marketing collateral.

So, is it “calls to action” or “call to actions?” Patience, my darlings.

What is a call to action?

In both digital and print design, a call to action (CTA) is an element that directs users to do “the thing.” The CTA might encourage users to read an article, watch a video, or buy some random crap they don’t need. On websites, emails, or social media ads/posts, the CTA is almost exclusively a clickable button or link that allows the user to do “the thing” by taking them to another webpage or pulling up a fillable form. In print, the CTA is a short sentence or phrase followed by a website URL, email address, or phone number where the reader can find more information or do the thing.

What’s the plural form of “call to action?”

It’s “calls to action.” Always has been. Always will be. When we’re referring to more than one call to action, traditional English grammar tells us to just slap an s on the end of the phrase and don a smug smile for being good little boys and girls. Not so fast, champ. The problem is, slapping an s on the end to create “call to actions” implies there’s a single call and multiple actions, which is seldom the case. No rational marketer (yes, that’s an oxymoron) would create a CTA that tells users to do several different things at once. That CTA would be certifiably schizophrenic.

Let’s break it down. On a webpage that contains multiple CTA buttons, they’ll either all encourage the user to take the same action (i.e. multiple calls, one action) or encourage the user to take more than one action (i.e. multiple calls, multiple actions). In both cases, call is the word that receives the pluralization, not action.

Why? Because call to action is a compound word. Compound words combine multiple individual words to create a new word or phrase. When a compound word contains two or more nouns, you pluralize the primary noun. In this case, the primary noun is call.

Wait, what about saying “calls to actions?” *takes long, passive-aggressive breath* Nooooooope. And for the same reason provided above. Even if you have multiple calls for multiple actions throughout your webpage/email/ad, each individual CTA should only feature a single action.

What about pluralizing the CTA acronym?

So, if the proper pluralized term is “calls to action,” does that mean the plural form of CTA is “CsTA?” No. Just, no. That’s not how acronyms work. Even if one of the words in an acronym is plural, you only include the first letter of that word as part of the acronym—not the s that makes it plural. And also, it sounds dumb. Say it out loud and tell me you’re not embarrassed for having uttered such nonsense. Can’t do it, can you? The plural form of CTA is “CTAs.” And, yes, it has a lowercase s to make it clear that you’re referring to more than one CTA and that the s isn’t another word in the acronym.

Do you hyphenate call to action?

Generally speaking? No. “Call to action” by itself is a noun, so you should only hyphenate it when using it as an adjective to modify another word. 

For example: “this is the call-to-action button” is correct because call to action is being used as an adjective to describe the button. Alternatively, you would say “this button is the call to action” without the hyphens because call to action is being used as a noun, not an adjective.

Also, not that you asked, but call to action doesn’t get capitalized in regular usage because it’s not a proper noun. If it’s part of a headline that’s using title case (like I am for the title of this post), you can capitalize it. If it’s beginning a sentence, you only capitalize the c in “call.” The acronym, CTA, is always capitalized because that’s what you do with acronyms.

There you go. I just taught you something that your four-year university didn’t. That will be $80,000, please and thank you. I accept payment in the form of Venmo, Bitcoin, and cuddles. Cuddles preferred.