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Comment: Expanded article on letters, article numbers in references, example of spelled-out flowchart, article on mpox,

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fire and rescue service

Lower case.

(UKHSA) Flowchart

All flowcharts must be accompanied by a full text transcription. Here's a good example from HMRC.

foot and mouth disease

Lower case.

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Letters come in several formats:

  1. Letters coming from UKHSA use the UKHSA letter template.
  2. Letters designed to adapted by GPs, HPTs etc and printed off, do not require the UKHSA template.
  3. Correspondence content types

Letters included as appendices in guidance should be taken out and made into stand-alone attachments - easier for users,.

Links in letters should generally be left naked, but you can use the shortened form i.e.  start start with gov.uk 

life cycle

Not 'lifecycle' or 'life-cycle'.

HTML letters in Correspondence content type are often for factual awareness of the target audience i.e. not to be printed or used as letters - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/respiratory-syncytial-virus-rsv-vaccination-programmes-letter/introduction-of-new-nhs-vaccination-programmes-against-respiratory-syncytial-virus-rsv

life cycle

Not 'lifecycle' or 'life-cycle'.

Front-load your link text with the Front-load your link text with the relevant terms and make them active and specific. Always link to online services first. Offer offline alternatives afterwards, when possible.

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(UKHSA) Link text should be the full title of the target page. 'Further guidance is available at [TITLE]'.Don’t say ‘on GOV.UK’. 

Some links come to us including GOV.UK or www.gov.uk at the end of the link text. Delete this 1) to avoid clutter and 2) because it is assumed our links should be to GOV.UK pages. 

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Links to Facebook or any other site which requires a login, add '(login required)' in the link text.

Link If linking to a page in a foreign language, indicate this in parentheses (in French) in the link text.

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Currencies are lower case.

Months

See 'Dates'.

multi-ethnic

(UKHSA) Monkeypox

Mpox is a rare disease that is caused by infection with monkeypox virus (MPXV) - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/monkeypox. On its first appearance write 'mpox (monkeypox)' and thereafter just 'mpox' when referring to the disease. If referring to the virus, write monkeypox virus (MPXV) and then the acronym thereafter.

Months

See 'Dates'.

multi-ethnic

Hyphenated.

multi-year funding

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(UKHSA) Sometimes guidance text lists a set of steps or bullets applying to a situation and then simply has 'or:' and another set of steps or bullets. In this case do 2 things 1) to avoid ambiguity and make clearer, consider amplifying the introductory sentence to flag this, something like 'There are two options for treatment' 2) Put Or on a new line with a capital letter and followed by a colon.

Organisations

Use the singular verb form when referring to organisations by name. Use ‘they’ when replacing an organisation name with a pronoun.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mers-cov-public-health-investigation-and-management-of-possible-cases/algorithm-for-the-investigation-and-management-of-possible-cases-of-mers-cov-accessible-text-version

Organisations

Use the singular verb form when referring to organisations by name. Use ‘they’ when replacing an organisation name with a pronoun.

For exampleFor example: ‘HMPO is the sole issuer of UK passports. They will send your new passport within 3 weeks’

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Use 'to' rather than a hyphen in the page range. We number references and use numbered citations in round brackets in the main text to refer to them. 

If text-format citations are written out in full (If many text-format citations are written out in full (Smith and Jones, 2012)   and are cluttering up the text, convert them to a numbered reference list at the end of the doc and replace the offending citations with numbers in round brackets. 

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References: Article number

E numbers in a reference indicate article number and are should be written thus: volume 23, issue 15, article e0179572 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-norovirus-and-rotavirus-surveillance-reports-2023-to-2024-season/national-norovirus-and-rotavirus-report-week-23-report-data-to-week-21-data-up-to-26-may-2024

Regulations

(UKHSA)

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Regions

(UKHSA)

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(UKHSA) The UKHSA regions are:

  • North East
  • North West
  • Yorkshire and Humber
  • East Midlands
  • West Midlands
  • East of England
  • South West
  • South East
  • London
  • England
  • South West
  • South East
  • London

(UKHSA) Regularly

If a document advises users to do something (lime wash their hands) regularly, ask the authors to be more specific - how often?

Regulations

(UKHSA) Delete ‘No.’ so that ‘EU Regulation No. 2073/2005’ becomes ‘EU Regulation 2073/2005’. 

Resistant

(UKHSA) Avoid hyphens, even in compound adjectives, unless absolutely necessary. So:

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Keys - put important information necessary to make sense of the table, above it.

Footnotes - do not use symbols. Do not use superscript symbols such as asterisk, dagger and so on. Use the format format note [note 1], [note 2] and put these under 'Notes' in heading 4. See https://gss.

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civilservice.gov.uk/policy-store/releasing-statistics-in-spreadsheets/#section-6 

In HTML, right align data columns by adding a colon to the right end of the series of dashes in the top row: |-------------:|

In text, when referring to Table 1, 2, 3 etc, use capitals because it's a proper noun (see Table 3).

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