Buckinghamshire Council style guide

The first time you use an abbreviation or acronym explain it in full on each page unless it’s well known, like UK, US or MP. This includes council departments or named schemes. Then you can refer to it by initials.

Do not use full stops in abbreviations: BBC, not B.B.C.

Use 'and' rather than &, unless it’s a a company’s name as it appears on the Companies House register.

Only use bold to refer to text from interfaces in technical documentation or instructions.

You can use bold to explain what field a user needs to fill in on a form, or what button they need to select. For example: “Select Continue. The Verify Certificate window opens.”

Use bold sparingly - using too much will make it difficult for users to know which parts of your content they need to pay the most attention to.

Do not use bold in other situations, for example to emphasise text.

To emphasise words or phrases, you can:

• front-load sentences
• use headings
• use bullets

Lower case, unless it’s the name of the council, like Buckinghamshire Council, or in Council Tax.

DO NOT USE BLOCK CAPITALS FOR LARGE BLOCKS OF TEXT AS THEY ARE HARD TO READ.

Use sentence case in page titles. This is when you capitalise only the first letter of the first word of a title, like you would in a sentence. For example, "Bin collection, recycling and waste". Use sentence case in column and row headers in tables, too, for example "Annual profits".

Use capitals for:

• titles like Mr, Mrs, Dr, the Duke of Cambridge (the duke at second mention); Pope Francis, but the pope
• Rt Hon (no full stops)
• buildings
• place names
• brand names
• faculties, departments, institutes and schools
• specific job titles, for example Executive Director of Resources
• names of groups, directorates and organisations, for example Knowledge and Innovation Group
• titles of specific, named bills, acts, policies or strategies, for example Housing Reform Bill (but use “the bill”, “the act”, “the policy” or “the strategy” after the first time you use the full title)
• names of specific, named council schemes known to people outside the council, for example, Council Tax
• specific select committees, for example Children's and Education Select Committee
• titles of books (and within single quotes), for example, ‘The Study Skills Handbook’
• World War 1 and World War 2 (note caps and numbers)

Do not capitalise:

• council
• government
• sections or schedules within specific named acts, regulations or orders
• general job titles, for example chief executive
• group and directorate, unless referring to a specific group or directorate: the Commercial Directorate, for example
• policy themes like sustainable communities, promoting economic growth, local enterprise zones
• general mention of select committees (but do cap specific ones - see above)
• the military

Avoid negative contractions like can’t and don’t. Many users find them harder to read, or misread them as the opposite of what they say. Use cannot, instead of can’t.

Avoid should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, they’ve too. These can also be hard to read.

You should:

• use upper case for months: January, February
• not use a comma between the month and year: 4 June 2021
• use the shortened form of months when space is an issue, for example, Jan, Feb
• use ‘to’ in date ranges not hyphens, for example, tax year 2011 to 2012
• not use ‘quarter’ for dates use the months instead, for example, January to March 2020
• include the date in brackets when referring to ‘today’, for example, in a news article

When writing dates, remember that your content needs to make sense in future when people read it, not just at the time it is published. For example, say “between 2020 and 2023” not “over the next 3 years”.

Not 'the disabled’ or ‘people with disabilities’.

Follow government guidance on inclusive language and our advice for Creating accessible webpages and documents.

Where content links to geographically specific legacy content this should be referred to as being from a 'former xxx district area'. EG

• former Aylesbury Vale district area
• former Chiltern district area
• former Wycombe district area
• former South Bucks district area

Exclamation marks are generally used to show emotion, commands and interjections. Do not use these unless quoting directly.

Do not use FAQs on the Buckinghamshire Council website. If a question is frequently asked, it means the user needs this information and it should be in the main content of our site.

You can find out more about why the GOV.UK website does not use FAQS.

You should address the user as ‘you’ where possible and avoid using gendered pronouns like ‘he’ or ‘she’.

You might not always be able to use ‘you’. For example, if you’re referring to more than one person, such as the user and someone else jointly applying for something. In these cases, use ‘they’ and ‘their’.

Hyphenate:

• re- words starting with e, like re-evaluate
• co-ordinate
• co-operate

Do not hyphenate:

• reuse
• reinvent
• reorder
• reopen
• email

Do not use a hyphen unless it’s confusing without it, for example, a little used-car is different from a little-used car. You can also refer to the Guardian style guide for advice on hyphenation.

Use ‘to’ for time and date ranges, not hyphens.

Do not use italics. Use ‘single quotation marks’ if referring to a document, scheme or initiative.

We only use images on pages if they help users to understand something. This may include maps or road signs.

Images are 660 x 412 pixels.

When explaining a legal requirement, use the word 'must'. For example ‘your employer must pay you the national minimum wage’.

If the word ‘must’ doesn’t have enough emphasis, you can use ‘legal requirement’, ‘legally entitled’, or something similar. For example 'Once your child is registered at school, you are legally responsible for making sure they attend regularly'.

If a requirement is legal, but administrative, or part of a process that won’t have criminal repercussions then use ‘need to’. For example ‘You will need to provide copies of your marriage certificate’.

Specific job and role titles are upper case, for example, Payments Officer, Children’s Home Manager.

Generic job titles and role titles are lower case: director, accountant.

Lists should be bulleted to make them easier to read.

For example:

The following countries are in the EU:

• Spain
• France
• Portugal
• Germany
• Italy...

Very long lists can be written as a paragraph with a lead-in sentence if this looks better. Consider which way of presenting the information makes it clearer for users.

Use the £ symbol: £75

Do not use decimals unless pence are included: £75.50 but not £75.00

Do not use ‘£0.xx million’ for amounts less than £1 million.

Write out pence in full: calls will cost 4 pence per minute from a landline.

Currencies are lower case.

Use ‘one’ unless you’re talking about a step, a point in a list or another situation where using the numeral makes more sense: "in point 1 of the instructions", for example.

Write all other numbers in numerals (including 2 to 9) except where it’s part of a common expression like ‘one or two of them’ where numerals would look strange.

If a number starts a sentence, write it out in full (Thirty-four, for example) except where it starts a title or subheading. When writing out numbers in full, numbers between 21 and 99 should be hyphenated. For example, twenty-one and ninety-nine.

For numerals over 999, insert a comma for clarity: 9,000

Spell out common fractions like one-half.

Use a % sign for percentages: 50%

Use a 0 where there’s no digit before the decimal point: 0.2.

Use ‘500 to 900’ and not ‘500-900’ (except in tables).

Addresses: use ‘to’ in address ranges: 49 to 53 Cherry Street.

Spell out first to ninth. After that use 10th, 11th and so on.

In tables, use numerals throughout.

In long passages of speech, open quotes for every new paragraph, but close quotes only at the end of the final paragraph.

Use double quotes in body text for direct quotations.

Use single quotes:

• in headlines
• for unusual terms
• when referring to words
• when referring to publications
• when referring to notifications such as emails or alerts

Do not use semicolons as they are often misread. Long sentences using semicolons should be broken up into separate sentences instead.

Short URLs should:

• always be clear, unambiguous and easy to read, type and share
• be in lowercase
• align with the title of the page
• use dashes to separate words so they're easy to read - for example, /bin-day (this might not apply if the URL is designed to be read aloud)
• use the verb stem where possible - for example, /apply instead of /applying
• be based on user need rather than the (current) name of a policy, scheme or service, which might change
• include the year when using for a one-off promotion of an annual event like /corporate-plan-2021

Short URLs should not:

• contain acronyms
• use articles (a, an, the) or other superfluous words - for example, use /benefits or /benefits-guides rather than /a-guide-to-benefits
• be used to redirect a user to a non-government site
• include trailing slashes when sharing or printing URLs as it’s bad for search engine optimisation (SEO) - for example, use /your-url-here rather than /your-url-here/

Where possible, display the full social media handle, for example 'Follow us @BuckCouncil on Facebook'.

Do not hyperlink only the platform name 'X'.

Where required, we will need to change the formatting of the text around the hyperlink, for example;

• • follow us on our social media channels:
    • @BucksCouncil on Facebook
    • @BucksCouncil on X

Use Telephone: 011 111 111 or Mobile:. Do not use Mob:.

Use spaces between city and local exchange. Here are the different formats to use:

• 01273 800 900
• 020 7450 4000
• 0800 890 567
• 07771 900 900
• 077718 300 300
• +44 (0)20 7450 4000
• +39 1 33 45 70 90

When a number is memorable, group the numbers into easily remembered units: 0800 80 70 60.

Always hyperlink the telephone number, for example 01273 800 900.

Use Celsius: 37°C

Use ‘to’ in time ranges, not hyphens, en rules or em dashes: 10am to 11am (not 10-11am)

Use the following styles for times:

• 5:30pm (not 1730hrs)
• midnight (not 00:00)
• midday (not 12 noon, noon or 12pm)
• 6 hours 30 minutes

Midnight is the first minute of the day, not the last. You should consider using '11:59pm' to avoid confusion about a single, specific time.

For example, “You must register by 11:59pm on Tuesday 14 June.” can only be read one way, but “You must register by midnight on Tuesday 14 June” can be read in two ways (the end of Monday 13, or end of Tuesday 14).

Don’t use any underlining as this is easily confused with hyperlinks