The official taxonomic naming convention for families is that they end with -aceae. Only a few exceptions have survived: Palmae, Gramineae, Cruciferae, Leguminosae, Guttiferae, Umbelliferae, Labiatae, and Compositae.  (See Section 2, Article 18.5 of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature for details).

Before the age of computers, the ending was spelled with the special letter � so that Fabaceae was spelled Fabace�. Recently, with the introduction of UNICODE, a return to this older style of spelling has become more commonplace. The Complete Botanica allows both methods to be used. To switch from one style ending to the other use the Customize settings window.

By convention, family names are usually shown in all upper case letters. Here is what the drop-down combo-box for all family names beginning with �AC� looks like:

Note that regardless of how the names are displayed, they are always stored in the database as �AE�.