House style guidelines
Formatting text can provide emphasis and direction for the reader. Consistent formatting across websites ensures they are professional and approachable.
This page provides guidelines on the use of bold, capitals, italics, lists (and sub-lists) and underlining on web pages.
Bold
Be careful when using bold - large blocks of bold can be distracting, while a word in bold may be mistaken for a link. If you do use bold, please use black bold, as coloured bold can be mistaken for a link.
Capitals
Limit use of capitals. Overuse can make words difficult to read, and can be distracting.
Capitalise the House of Lords/Commons. Do not capitalise parliament unless part of a name, eg European Parliament.
Capitalise titles and ranks when they refer to a particular person (King David I, the Prime Minister). (See also ‘Job Titles’.)
Titles and ranks are not capitalised when they are used in a general sense (a king and all the bishops).
Capitalise Catholic and Protestant.
Capitalise historical periods and wars (the Dark Ages, World War II).
Capitalise trade names (Coca-Cola, Hovis).
Do not capitalise the names of the seasons (summer, winter).
Do not capitalise internet or world wide web.
Capitalise SQA subjects and course titles/unit titles, otherwise do not: ‘She has a degree in modern languages.’
Italics
Italics are hard to read on screen and thus should generally be avoided.
For displayed quotes in quote boxes, use italics and single quotes.
Lists
There are two ways to use bulleted lists.
The first example is one sentence, so runs on throughout each bullet point.
Example: Emma didn’t want to act in the play because:
she was shy and self-conscious
she wasn’t very good at remembering her lines
she had to buy her own costume and couldn’t afford to pay for it.
The second example contains three separate sentences.
Example: Emma didn’t want to act in the play for the following reasons.
She was shy and self-conscious.
She wasn’t very good at remembering her lines.
She had to buy her own costume and couldn’t afford to pay for it.
Sub-lists should be displayed as follows.
Production of text involves the following:
author
format
number of words
copy deadline
raising copyright issues
allocating ISBN.
Underline
This should be avoided, except for hyperlinks. Many readers have become accustomed to clicking on underlined text and being taken to another part of a document, to another document or another website.