UITS editorial style guide: Structure

• Overview
• Titles and headers
• Links
• Lists
• Call-to-action buttons
• Contact forms
• Soliciting questions

Overview

Users tend to scan until they find the information they need. Large chunks of text can be overwhelming, so break up your text for ease of navigation. Use titles and headers, links, lists, and call-to-action buttons to help guide users through a page.

Pay attention to guidelines for creating accessible content.

Titles and headers

Make sure titles and headers are clear, concise, and descriptive, and avoid gerunds.

Links

• Use link text that clearly describes what users will get when they click.
• Set internal links to open in the same window (where the user stays within the site infrastructure), and set external links to open in a new window (where the user will leave the site).

Lists

Lists improve readability and navigation. Follow these guidelines:

• Introduce lists with a phrase or sentence, followed by a colon and line space.
• Use sentence case (capitalize only the first word and proper nouns).
• Maintain a parallel structure (use the same grammatical form for each list item).
• Don't include punctuation, unless a complete sentence follows in the same list item.
• Try to include no more than seven items per list.
• Use numbered lists for steps to be done in order, and bulleted lists for anything else.

Call-to-action buttons

Call-to-action buttons request that the user complete an action (for example, log in, sign up, connect). These should be no more than four words in length, and located in the hero area (the most prominent area of the page).

Contact forms

• Header: Contact us
• Button: Submit

Soliciting questions

• Header: Questions?
• Text: Email (address hyperlinked with a mailto)