To decide what content type to use, refer to our section on Whitehall publisher content types.Title
Title
Front load subject matter i.e. put the main subject at the beginning, for example: 'Identifying and reducing inequalities in NHS population screening' is better as 'NHS population screening: identifying and reducing inequalities'
Front loading titles makes them more findable by Google.
Similarly, titles Titles should be 65 characters or less (including spaces). That's because this is how many characters are displayed in a Google search result.
Summary
Try not to repeat phrases from the title. Try to
Summaries also have a character limit, this time of 160 characters (including spaces) because Google usually only shows the first 160 characters of a page summary in search results.
Details section
Keep it brief. Important information is usually in the attachments.
Attachments
Do not add a Gateway number if attachments are created in HTML, i.e. only use Gateway numbers for PDFs.
Markdown
Consult When editing within Whitehall Publisher, you can consult markdown tips for common formatting requirements, on the right of each webpage.
Avoid ‘Words Note the 'Words to avoid’ section, also listed on the right of each webpage.
Numbered sections
By default all the heading 2s (##) appear in a content list at the top left of every HTML attachment.
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You turn off the numbering function by ticking the ‘Manually numbered headings’ tickbox.
Style tips
Headings
Use headings, starting with heading 2, indicated by ##, then heading 3 (###) and heading 4 (####).
All headings should be in sentence case i.e. avoid unnecessary capitals.
Acronyms
Spell out all acronyms on their first appearance. Identify all the acronyms used in the text and make a list of them at end of main text using acronym markdown e.g. *[PHEUKHSA]: Public UK Health EnglandSecurity Agency. (This is explained in the 'Formatting Markdown' section on the right of each WP page.)
Capitals
Do not capitalise words for emphasis. If points must be emphasised use bold (sparingly).
Hyphens
Do not use hyphens to indicate duration. '20-40' should be written ’20 to 40’
Italics
Italics Italics aren’t possible in Markdown, so can’t be used for species names.
Links
Embed links in meaningful link text using the format [link text](URL).
Number
All numbers must be written as digits except one, unless one is used directly with other numbers or as part of a sequence of steps.
Slashes
Do not use forward slashes for years, use the word ‘to’. 2019/20 should be written ‘2019 to 2020’.
Tables
The Tables The Markdown Formatting section explains how to create tables in markdown.
Note that there is an online table creator which converts simple tables to Markdown.
Toggle tables to bar charts
WP now has a functionality which allows users to toggle between tables and bar charts. This is explained on the Bar charts page.
Images
Refer to the images and infographics section
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- images must be 960 x 640 pixels in dimension
- add an image to a web page using the 'New Image' functionality on the main Document page
- add a caption but no alt text; GDS now mandate that instead of alt text all images must be described in the main body copy
- when you upload an image the system generates a snippet of markdown code, for example ‘!!1’. Insert this in the text where you want the image to appear