We follow the guidance of the Australian Government's Style Manual: Structuring
Design content with a structure that helps the user navigate and understand. Structure also helps search engines find and rank content in a search results listing.
Page title
- Be unique and descriptive (e.g. "About the Department of Premier and Cabinet" not "About us").
- Frontload with your keywords and end with your department or organisation name.
- Use sentence case (capitalise only the first word and proper nouns).
- Aim for between 30 and 70 characters.
Introduction text
- Summarise the purpose of your content in one or 2 sentences.
- Use complete sentences with punctuation at the end.
- Include a call to action if relevant (e.g. 'Apply for X', 'Submit a complaint about Y', 'View Z').
Paragraphs
- Present the most important information first, or a summary of what will be covered on the page.
- Use short paragraphs that are 2 or 3 sentences long, with a maximum of 15 words per sentence.
- Write in plain language.
- Read the Style Manual's guidance on types of and on
Headings and subheadings
- Use headings to break up the content.
- Headings should be short and use keywords.
- Your page title is the H1 heading attached to the page's meta data.
- Heading sizes must be sequential to meet accessibility requirements.
- All main headings on a page need to be H2.
- Subheadings under these are H3, and then H4 if required.
- Read the Style Manual's guidance on
Lists
- Lists help to make content scannable.
- Numbered lists should only be used when there is a particular order or to show priority.
- Use a parallel structure (e.g. all verbs using the same form) for each list item that flows from the lead-in sentence.
- For example, this list is being used to:
- illustrate an example of writing lists
- guide content editors through using a parallel structure
- For example, this list is being used to:
- No punctuation should be used for bulleted lists, unless each list item is a complete sentence.
- Read the Style Manual's guidance on
Links and calls to action
- A call to action is a button, link or card that leads the reader to the next step in their journey (Apply, Register, Subscribe, etc.).
- Write link text that describes the destination in clear language (e.g. 'Find out more on the Australian Government Style Manual website' not 'click here').
- Read the Style Manual's guidance on
Content production template
Use the Australian Government content production to plan, write and check your content.
Reviewed 21 March 2023