Writing for accessibility

Home/Landing pages

A home page exists to start a conversation with the site visitor and to direct the visitor to the area of the website that has the answers to the questions they need.

Home and Landing pages should:

• • Be scannable (avoid wordy welcome messages)

  • Convey general sense of what the site is about

  • Act as a hub for the sub-pages in that section

Scannability

Good web content tells users at a glance whether or not they've arrived at the right place, and helps them do what they need to do.

• • Be concise - If you can say it in fewer words, do so. One idea per paragraph.

  • Put the most important information first - Users, and search engines, scan to find the information they need and move on.

  • Avoid acronyms - They’re confusing and/or meaningless to outside users. If you must use an acronym on the page, be sure to use its full name on first reference and include the acronym in parentheses. ie. Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering (CLaSP).

Lists

Where you see commas, ask yourself if it could be a list

• Use bulleted lists most of the time

• Only use numbered lists if the order of the list items is important (if they're ranked or sequential)

Statistics

When you see a statistic, ask yourself if it could be a graphic or chart

• Try a big number and a small amount of text

• Focus on the number and impact, provide a link to the data

Voice, Tone and Grammar

Edit mercilessly

1. Cut out procedural language like "this page explains..." Do this first. It'll give you less copy to have to edit.

2. Make the language conversational (important even for smart people). SeeHemingway Editor link above. Even though we’re a university, you want content that’s written at about a tenth-grade level.

3. Rearrange wording to make verbs active and sentence structure simple. Sometimes it helps to find instances of is, are, & were and ask yourself what action is really taking place.

Write meaningful link text

The text your visitor clicks to follow a link should tell them where they're going. ie. Michigan Engineering website, NOT click here or learn more

Central Source of Truth

Avoid posting duplicate information. It quickly becomes difficult to keep up to date. If information already exists on a more central source (ie. the Rackham site for info common to all grad students) link to that page instead of repeating information on your site.

Style

• • This is Title Case

  • This is sentence case

  • DON’T USE ALL CAPS IN BODY TEXT

  • Limit your use of exclamation points!!!!!!

In the 42 Design system, we typically use use sentence case in the following instances:

• • Page titles

  • Subheads/section heads

  • Anchor links

  • Titles of promo boxes/widgets

  • Linked calls to action in promo and body copy

  • Bullet points in promos

  • Use sentence case for captions

  • Ampersands (&) should be used in page titles, headers and promo titles

  • Calls to Action (CTAs) should not use punctuation

Michigan Engineering style

• • Writing should follow the Michigan Engineering Style Guide and Associated Press Style

  • Should always be “Michigan Engineering” and not “CoE”

  • Should always be “U-M,” not “U of M” or “Umich” or “UMichigan”

  • Freshman/Freshmen should always be First Year/First Years