Reference manual

Abbreviations and acronyms

Use the full phrase the first time you use it, followed by the abbreviation or acronym in brackets. After that, use the abbreviation or acronym by itself. Don’t use full stops in abbreviations or acronyms.

Active and passive voice

Active writing

Use active language. This makes your content more engaging and your sentences simpler. It is closer to speech.

Active writing puts the subject at the start of the sentence.

Passive writing

Passive is the opposite of active writing. Passive language can seem bureaucratic and does not focus on the person responsible for an action.  Sometimes it can be a tactful choice for that reason.

Use active language most of the time and passive only if there is a reason to use it.

And or ampersand (&)

Only use the “&” symbol in place of “and” when it forms part of a brand name and logo. Otherwise, always use “and”.

Apostrophes and when to use them

Apostrophes

Use apostrophes to show something belongs to something or someone.

Personal pronouns

Use personal pronouns, instead of nouns, to show something belongs to something or someone: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours or theirs. These do not have an apostrophe.

Plurals

Do not use an apostrophe to show something is plural, even if it is the plural of an acronym.

To show something is missing

Contractions are when you leave letters out. You put in an apostrophe in the place where you’ve removed some letters or joined words together. Using contractions like “you’ll” and “we’ll” is less formal and can seem friendlier.

Avoid negative contractions, like “shouldn’t”, “can’t” and “don’t” as many users find them harder to read or understand. Use “cannot”, instead of “can’t”.

Avoid “should’ve”, “could’ve”, “would’ve”, “they’ve” too. They can be hard to read.

Bold and italic text

Bold

If you are putting together a guide to a system, you can use bold to refer to specific menu links or buttons.

If you use bold too much, it’s difficult for people to scan your content for keywords. Instead of using bold for emphasis, you can:

• put keywords towards the beginning of sentences
• use headings and subheadings
• use bullets.

Italics

Do not use italics. Use ‘single quotation marks’ if referring to a document, scheme or initiative.

Bullets and steps

Bullets

When you are adding a bulleted list:

• start your list with a line of introductory text ending in a colon
• make sure that each bullet makes sense when read this the line of introductory text
• use lower case at the start of each bullet unless the first word is the name or a person, place or organisation
• keep bullet points short but you can use commas or dashes to expand on an item
• do not put “on” or “and” after a bullet
• do not put a semi-colon after each bullet
• end the list with a full stop.

Bullets point that are sentences

Bullet points should be short and easy to scan. If your bullets are complete sentences, review the content and turn it into short paragraphs with descriptive subheadings instead.

Steps

You can use a numbered list to guide people through a process. In this case you do not need an introductory line of text.

Each step is a complete sentence and ends in a full stop.

Capital letters

Do not use block capitals for large amounts of text. It’s hard to read.

Sentence case for headings and subheadings

In headings and subheadings use sentence case by putting a capital on the first word but not on the others unless a word is a proper noun.

Names that identify a particular person, place or organisation should have capital letters.

Renfrewshire Council, the Council, councils

Use capitals when referring to Renfrewshire Council or the Council, meaning Renfrewshire Council.

If you are talking about councils, in general, use lower case.

Councillor and councillors

Use a capital when mentioning a particular councillor and a lower case when talking about councillors in general.

Colons, semicolons and hyphens

Colon

Use a colon before a quote or a bulleted list.

Semicolon

Semi-colons separate complete but closely related sentences. Try to shorten your sentences instead of using semicolons to link ideas. This will make your content easier to read.

Hyphen

Use hyphens sparingly, for example, where a word might be difficult to read or pronounce without the hyphen.

Or to avoid confusion when the same word has a different meaning, without a hyphen.

Downloads (PDF documents)

Information published in a PDF format is harder to find, use and maintain than standard HTML web content.

This is because PDFs:

• do not resize to fit the browser
• are not designed for screen reading
• are harder to track on analytics
• can be harder for people to access than standard web content
• are harder to reuse when sharing content across different platforms
• can make it harder for users to navigate and orientate themselves
• are less likely to be up to date.

eg, etc and ie

eg, etc and ie are abbreviations from Latin. Try not to use them in your content because they aren’t always understood.

eg and ‘for example’

Instead of eg, use

• for example
• such as
• like

etc and ‘other similar things’

If you want to explain that a list is not exhaustive, try putting “for example”, “such as”, “like” or “including” in front of the items on your list.

Ie or ‘that is’

ie is often used to clarify a sentence but you can use alternatives such as “meaning” or “that is”. Focus on writing content which is clear and easy to understand and then you won’t need to explain it in more detail.

Email addresses

Write email addresses in full, in lower case and as active links. Do not put any other words in the link text.

FAQs

When people are looking for answers, they tend to use search. They do not browse lists of FAQs because that is not the most efficient way to find the answer to their query. If all your subheadings begin with “how” or “what” or “when” or “why”, they are hard to scan. You can make answers easier for people to find by having keywords at the start of headings.

Do not use the FAQ format. Focus on what someone needs to know and organise your page using descriptive headings, links and bullets so that information is easy to find.

Headings and subheadings

Headings and subheadings should be as descriptive as possible. Have keywords appearing as close to the start of the headings as possible.

Using heading styles

Make sure that you apply the right heading styles to headings and subheadings as these elements will give your digital content a structure and make your content more accessible than if you just format a heading using bold.

Inclusive language

Use language that puts people first. If you are talking about a condition that someone has, or referring to their disability, refer to the person before their disability or the condition that affects them. See Gov.uk advice on inclusive language.

Links

Link to relevant content on our websites but also to third party websites and services where these meet a user need.

Link text should make sense out of context when you read it in isolation. It should be descriptive and include relevant keywords. It should also uniquely identify a specific page so you shouldn’t have two links with the same link text going to two different pages. Do not use “click here,” “tap here,” “read more” or “download here.”

Numbers including dates and times

0 to 9

Use words for zero to nine and numbers for everything from 10 up. You should still use the number when you are listing steps or adding numbers to a table or if it is in a date range with a number over 9.

10 to 999,999

In text, higher numbers should be written in figures, using commas to show thousands. If a number is used to start a sentence or in a heading or subheading, spell it out in full.

Millions, billions and trillions

Use m for million, bn for billion (one thousand million or 10⁹) or tn for trillion (one million million or 10¹²) for money and quantities.

You do not need a space between the figure and the unit of measurement.

Use million, billion or trillion in full when the figure relates to people or animals.

Decimals

Express decimals as numbers. Use up to two decimal places and add a 0 at the start where there is not a number before the decimal point.

Percentages

You should use two separate words for “per cent” in most cases but you can use a % sign in a table of figures.

Ages

Do not use hyphens in ages.

Measurements

When giving measurements, use numbers and spell out the unit of measurement the first time that you mention it. After that you can use abbreviations. If it’s only mentioned once, do not use an abbreviation.

Dates

Use the format day month year without a comma.

When you have a timescale that gives a date range use “to” between the two dates and not a dash.

If space is an issue, for example, in a table, you can use shortened forms of months.

Only use the endings “st”, “nd”, “rd” and “th” if you are talking about a century or anniversary.

Decades

If you are talking about a decade, it’s a plural so does not have an apostrophe. It should have an apostrophe at the beginning if it is a shortened version, that is, you leave the century part off.

Times

For times of day, use digits and the am and pm format. Separate hours and minutes with a colon, if required.

Opening hours

When you have opening times and a time range, use the 12 hour clock and add “to” between the opening hours instead of a dash.

Or, not forward slash

Use “or” to separate options not “/”

Plain English

The Plain English Campaign offers advice on making your writing easier to read. This involves

• choosing short words
• writing in short sentences
• using active language
• avoiding jargon
• explaining technical terms.

See the Plain English Campaign’s A-Z of alternative words.

Quotation marks

Single quotation marks

Use single quotation marks:

• in headlines
• for unusual terms
• to report speech within speech
• when referring to publication title.

Double quotation marks

Use double quotation marks in body text for direct quotations.

Quoting chunks of text

If you are quoting paragraphs of text, use double quotes. Use open quotes for every new paragraph but close quotes only at the end of the final paragraph.