The aim of the template is to ensure consistency of style and formatting across all PDFs which UKHSA publishes.
Download the UKHSA template by clicking on this image.
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UKHSA PHE Publishing checks that all documents comply with guidelines and requirements in the following areas:
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1. How to use the template, or formatting your document
Going through the template in order:
Style menu
Style menu
The template allows you to apply all the common styles to your text, such as body copy, headings, bullet points and so on, which is shown in the list of styles on the second page.
Do NOT try to access these styles from the Styles panel in the ribbon:
Instead use the formatted UKHSA Style menu.
Under the Styles and to the right is a To access the style menu, go to the Home tab, go along to the Styles grouping, and at the bottom right there is a small arrow.
Click this to open the Styles menu.
Note that the first time you do this the Style menu might open over your document. Click next to the word Style and drag it over to the left side of your screen, and hover it so it's just under the ribbon. Sooner or later it should 'click' into place and will from now on always open in this position.
You can make it wider or narrower, according to need or taste.
This Style menu contains all the styles you should need for an UKHSA document.
To use it. These are the styles you are mandated to use. To apply them, highlight the text you want to apply a style to, then select the appropriate styling from this list, for example 'Body copy' or 'Chapter heading 3'.
Tip: Sometimes text gets corrupted or fails to respond to styling. In which this case, highlight it and go to to Clear All at the top of the Style menu to remove all formatting and start again.
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Information about collaborators and co-authors should not go on the title page but in an Acknowledgment section or 'Prepared by' box sentence on the 'About UKHSA' page at the end of the template.
Table of contents (ToC)
When the document is finished, click the line below to activate the table of contents.go to the 'Contents' page of the template.
Right click on where it says 'Chapter heading' to open this dialogue box.
Select 'Update entire table' and click OK.
Manually (and carefully) Manually highlight and delete the Title and Contents entries. We want the first entry to be the first chapter heading.
If, after editing the document, you need to edit update the ToC page numbering, right-click the table, select ‘Update field’ then ‘Update page numbers only’, unless you need to completely rebuild it, in which case .
If you've done significant editing and added new chapters or sections, select ‘Update entire table’.
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Double click where it says 'Main title goes here as running header' to open the document header. Insert the title of the document in 10pt Arial in dark grey, not black.
Ideally, the running header should go on one line so it can be a sub-edited or abbreviated version of the title, in order to achieve this you may have to sub-edit or abbreviate the title a bit.
Headings
Headings must indicate the hierarchy of importance. Major new sections are Chapter headings, underneath which sit headings 2, 3 and 4.
To be fully accessible headings must be in the logical order, so the heading sitting beneath a Chapter heading must be a heading 2, not a heading 4, the next one under a heading 2 must be a heading 3, and so on.
Bold should not be used to indicate headings, only to emphasise important words, and then only sparingly
Page margins
Left margin 1.5cm, right margin 1.5cm, top margin 2.7cm, bottom margin 2cm.
When you change a page to landscape orientation, Word automatically changes the left margin to 2cm and the top margin to 1.8cm. This pushes a chart or table title uncomfortably close to the running header.
You have to manually fix these back to top 2.7cm and left 1.5cm by going to Layout > Margins > Custom margins and adjusting the numbers in the Margins section.
Body copy
All text should be styled as 'Body copy'. This means:
- Arial 12pt
- line spacing at set to 'At least 16ptsleft margin 1.5cm, right margin 18cm'
- all text is left justified, no indents for new paragraphs
no italics except for scientific names (E.coli) - do not use italics for quotations, footnotes or any other purpose. Italicised species names are allowed in document titles and headings.
avoid bold, although it can be used sparingly for emphasis - do not use bold to create headings, use the correct heading style.
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- have a lead-in line ending in a colon, followed by a line space
- no initial capital (unless a Proper Nounproper noun like London or UKHSA)
- no end punctuation
- be used for short clauses, not sentences or paragraphs
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If emphasis is absolutely necessary, use bold (sparingly).
COVID-19
The first use of 'COVID-19 ' in every document should spell out the word 'coronavirus' before giving the acronym, thus: 'coronavirus (COVID-19)'must always be spelled in full i.e. not just COVID, and always in capitals.
COVID-19 must always be spelt in capitals.
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As to the formatting of the end references, we follow Government Digital Service requirements which state that references should be easy to understand by anyone, not just specialists., so:
Names and initials of authors have no full stops.
Titles of publications have single speech marks round them.
All links must be embedded in the relevant title or text i.e. no exposed URLs.
Use plain English, so ‘and others’ instead of ‘et al’.
Spell out journal names in full. Google them, if necessary.
No full stop at the end of reference.
Spell out the volume number, issue number and pages.
- Lopez Bernal J, Andrews N, Gower C, Robertson C, Stowe J, Tessier E and others. ‘Effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines on covid-19 related symptoms, hospital admissions, and mortality in older adults in England: test negative case-control study’. British Medical Journal 2021: volume 373, page 1088
- Public Health England. ‘Public Health England vaccine effectiveness report – March 2021: Public Health England; 2021’
- Pritchard E, Matthews PC, Stoesser N, Eyre DW, Gethings O, Vihta K-D and others. ‘Impact of vaccination on SARS-CoV-2 cases in the community: a population-based study using the UK’s COVID-19 Infection Survey’. Infectious Diseases 2020: volume 27, issue 5, pages 234-244
- Public Health England. ‘Public Health England COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report: 20 May 2021(week 20)’ Public Health England; 2021
Links
Do not leave URLs exposed. All links must be embedded in the relevant meaningful text.
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Abbreviations, not acceptable in normal text, are acceptable in tables if there are is limited space restrictions.
Avoid merged cells, this makes tables inaccessible.
Make all margins / borders visible.
Format the table in Layout > Table properties > Table tab. Make the left and right cell margins 0.15cm.
Note: make sure the Top field is set to 0 cm. Having any value in this field is a prime cause for lines in a table disappearing when you convert it to PDF.
To space the text and let it breathe, go to the Home tab, click the small arrow in the Paragraph group to open the Paragraph dialogue box. Set the spacing before and after to 2pt. This is enough to separate the text from cell borders and so make the table easier to read.
Header row:
- Use light grey to indicate header row - highlight the header row, go to Table Design > Shading and choose the lightest grey at the top left which is called 'White, Background 1, Darker 5%'.
- Header row text in bold
The header row of each table must be tagged for accessibility. Do this by highlighting the header row, going to the Table Layout tab and click the Repeat header rows button. The ostensible point of this is to make header rows appear over multiple pages, but it also has the effect of tagging the header row for accessibility and so should be done even if the table is on one page.
As a general rule, text in a table should be aligned top left of cells and data top right.
Align content in a table use the Alignment buttons under the Layout tab ie i.e. highlight a column and select top left , or top right and so on. DO NOT USE THE SPACE BAR TO POSITION CONTENT IN TABLES - use the align functionality.
Numbers must include the thousand comma, that is: 11,328 not 11328.
Avoid colour in graphs. This a) :
- is conveying information through colour, which unsighted people cannot see
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- - find another way to highlight cells - the obvious route is to add a letter in square brackets; for example the common use of red, amber and green to highlight cells can be used but only so long as you add [R], [A] and [G] to the respective cells, and explain what they mean above the table.
- risks breaching colour contrast requirements, namely that the contrast ratio between a foreground colour and a background colour are above a certain
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- ratio
3. Visual elements
a) Accessible graphs
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Rule 3. If using coloured text or text on a coloured background, it must comply with WCAG colour contrast requirements i.e. be clearly legible.
Graphs must be big enough to read the text and legends. Often this requires putting them on landscape pages. (Tip: creating landscape pages often knocks the page numbers out. If your new landscape page number is 2, highlight it, right click it, select ‘Format page numbers’ and then ‘Continue from previous section’ to restore its place in the sequence of page numbers.)
Text is ideally must be Arial 12pt, as in main body copy.
Graphs do not have a frame round them.
Use Regarding the title of a graph (or table) use the style menu to apply the 'Figures/charts title style title' style to the title.
Visually, this just makes it go bold, but it is important to use the style and not bold because this tags it the title correctly when the doc is converted to PDF.
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Note the way the key to the graph is not beneath it, but a) place inside the graph and b) aligned in the same visual logic as the bars, that is, left to right.
b) Flow charts or algorithms
Flow charts need a detailed and literal text equivalent of every step of the process including all the questions and all the answers. A simple summary, or pointing to the data somewhere else, isn’t enough.
PHEUKHSA's Fetal anomaly screening: care pathways page has several good examples of flow charts accompanied by text alternatives. Or see another example at the bottom of HMRC's Capital Gains Manual
c) Infographics
This is because they are inaccessible to the blind or partially sighted.
d) Infographics
Like algorithms, infographics must be accompanied by a full text transcriptionInfographics are highly inaccessible and so are deprecated. If they must be included a full written summary must be given.