Pocket Guide

After you've reviewed all of the topics covered in the Writing & Style Guide, we offer the following as an everyday quick reference guide.

Craft Quality Web Content

• Keep it simple. Use short words, sentences and paragraphs.
• Use a more conversational tone. Administrative speak can be difficult to digest on the web.
• Don't use poor quality or oversized images. Take the time to edit your images offline before you upload to Cascade.
• Organize what you're saying. Write to keep important info near the top.
• Provide links within your content to help users find additional info.
• Avoid web clichés. Don't use terms like "click here," "welcome to our homepage" or "use the menu to your left."

Arrange Your Content for Usability

• Give every page a title. Teasers are a great way to elaborate the purpose of the page.
• Left align your text.
• Don't overuse bold and italics.
• Don't underline text. Only links should be underlined—and that's automatic.
• Break content up into skimmable sections. Bullets and headers give the eyes something to rest on.
• Don't use Headings 1-4, but Heading 6 may become your new best friend.
• Don't paste content directly from sources containing external formatting. Don't paste from Word.
• Don't incorporate non-Cascade web elements (external widgets, animated images, etc.). Ask your web manager for help.
• Keep the right-hand column clean and shorter than the content area. Don't overwhelm the page.

Wrangle Your Menus, Links & Other Navigation

• Keep your menu items down to 8 items or less (deeper menus may need to be longer).
• Ensure menu links take you to a page with the same (or very similar) page title.
• Turn on parents and siblings in menus unless doing so duplicates your site's banner title.
• Use descriptive phrases for your content links—don't use "click here."
• Indicate when linking to a document: a sample (pdf) and a sample (doc). Convert documents to PDFs when possible.