LibGuides Best Practices

Best practices for writing for the web:

• Focus on the users and think of your topic from their point of view.
• Put the most important information at the top.
• Chunk content into sections.
• Use the active voice and a conversational tone.
• Use plain, natural language and avoid professional jargon and acronyms.
• Be concise; less is more.
• If the information exists on another library page, link to it rather than repeating it.
• Use white space to reduce noise by visually separating information.

Make web pages scannable by using:

• highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others).
• meaningful headings and sub-headings (questions, especially those with pronouns, are effective).
• bullet points or numbered lists for a list of points/items (a general suggestion is to break up a list if more than 7 items, but you can use your judgement).
• one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph).
• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing.

Source: Jakob Nielsen's How User's Read on the Web

Related LibGuide pages

Font, size, color, styling

• Stick to the default font (Open Sans). Don't mix different fonts.
• Default font size is 14px. Don't use anything smaller.
• Use emphasis, bolding, and italicizing, sparingly. Each has its own function.
• Never use ALL CAPS for emphasis.
• Don't use underlines for emphasis. Users will think an underline is a hyperlink.

Capitalization

Guide and page titles

• The overall guide title and all page-level (tab) titles should be formatted in title case.
• Example: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Cat

Box titles and headings (H3, H4, etc.)

• Box-level titles (H2) and all levels of headings (H3, H4, etc.) used in the Rich Text Editor should be formatted in sentence case.
• Example: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cat

Spacing & alignment

• Text should always be left-aligned (never centered, right-aligned, or justified).
• Use only one space (not two) after end punctuation (periods, exclamation points, question marks) and after colons and semicolons.
• Do not use hard line breaks between headings and text.

Linked text

When adding in-line links to Rich Text / HTML content, they should be set to open in a new window. This is done by selecting the Target tab on the Link dialog box, and selecting New Window (_blank) from the drop-down menu. 

Removing formatting

When copy and pasting text from Word or another website, you must strip out unnecessary formatting that may corrupt your text and make it difficult for you to style yourself.

1. Paste the text into Rich Text Editor.
2. Select (highlight) the text.
3. Use the Remove Format button (appears as an italic letter T followed by a subscript letter X) to clear the formatting.

Related LibGuide pages