To decide what content type to use, refer to our section on Whitehall publisher content types.
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 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 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 markdown tips for common formatting requirements, on the right of each webpage.
Avoid ‘Words to avoid’, 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.
By default these headings will be numbered. We try to avoid numbering sections unless they occur in a long legal, or official document where numbered sections might need to be referred to.
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. *[PHE]: Public Health England. (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 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 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
The main points are:
- 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
Further reading