Style guide
Our customers are wide ranging, come from a variety of backgrounds and access
different, often multiple services.
As a council, we communicate with those customers in a variety of ways – in
person, on the phone, using leaflets, online and through letters, emails and the
local media.
The way we communicate is incredibly important. The language we use gives an
impression of our organisation, and it should always help our customers to
understand what we’re telling them.
The way we communicate, particularly in written language, should reflect what we
are; professional and approachable.
Not only will this make sure our customers see a high quality, professional
organisation when they read our materials, but it will help those customers with any
learning or reading difficulty to understand what we’ve written.
This style guide is based on the Plain English Campaign guidance. Please use
this guide when writing:
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Letters
Emails
Web content (see additional ‘Writing for the web’ section)
Formal documents
Forms
Publicity materials (eg. Words for leaflets, posters)
Be consistent
The main thing is consistency – if you do something a certain way, stick to it!
Ideally, this should be the case across all of our written materials (and this guide
should help), but it should always, without fail, be the case within the same
document.
Use simple wording
We are used to speaking and writing in ‘corporate office speak’. Our customers are
not. Some of our customers may find reading difficult, and we need to make it as
easy as possible to understand our written materials.
Use simple phrases where possible without being condescending, and where you
can use one word instead of two – do!
E.g. ‘Every year’ not ‘per annum’
E.g. ‘Use’ not ‘Utilise’
E.g. ‘The council provides a service’ not ‘the council delivers a service’
The Plain English Campaign has a helpful list of words to avoid and suggested
alternatives. You can find it here http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/files/alternative.pdf
Tone of voice
When we write for our customers, we should be approachable and professional.
Write as you speak and you’ll make people feel more confident in us.
A few things to think about when writing:
 Does your copy feel approachable and professional?
 Have you written it the way you would say it?
 Have you avoided words that don’t feel right because they’re too exclusive,
impersonal or formal?
 Do you get to the point quickly, so your copy is easy to read?
 Are you writing in an active way? E.g. ‘The council is hosting an event’ not
‘The event is being managed by the council’
Fonts and formatting
The most accessible font to read is Arial, which should be used for all copy
wherever possible. Please use at least 12 point size.
Avoid italics, BLOCK CAPITALS, and underlining things, as this makes text more
difficult to read. For the same reason, please avoid any unnecessary capital
letters, punctuation or symbols (see below).
Bold should be used for titles rather than underlining.
Please left align documents – it makes them easier to read. Do not right align or
justify. Only centre align in special cases.
Capitals
Capital letters should only be used for pronouns (names and titles of things).
E.g. North West Leicestershire District Council provides services to customers
The council provides services to customers
E.g. The Portfolio Holder for Housing
The councillor with responsibility for the housing service
Don’t use capitals for geographical areas (county, city, town, north, east, west etc)
or for descriptors (the strategy, the plan etc)
Numbers, times and dates
Numbers should be written as words from one to ten, then as numbers after 11
(except at the start of a sentence, when they are always written as words).
Numbers over 1,000 should have a comma before the last three digits.
Try to write thousands in full, e.g. £4,000 not £4k.
Numbers in millions can be abbreviated, using either million in full or a lower case
m, e.g. five million and £26.5 million.
Money should always be £3.50 rather than £03.50.
Times should always be written in the simple form (9am, 10.30pm) rather than
using a colon (10:30pm) or the 24 hour clock (22:30).
Dates should be written in full, e.g. Tuesday 22 January
Abbreviations and acronyms
Try to avoid using abbreviations wherever possible.
If you do use them, write the full term first and then the acronym in brackets e.g.
‘North West Leicestershire District Council (NWLDC)’.
Avoid using acronyms that the reader won’t understand e.g. use ‘local authority’
not ‘LA’
Bullet points
Bullet points should start with a sentence to introduce them, then have a colon.
They should:
 All start with a capital letter at the start of each point
 Only use a full stop on the final bullet point
 However, there is an exception to this rule. When a bullet point contains
more than one sentence, full stops are needed after all sentences.
Avoid symbols and excessive punctuation
Symbols like ampersands (&) and percentages (%) momentarily stop people
reading, which can prove troublesome for those who have difficulty reading.
Use ‘and’ and ‘percent’ instead when writing.
Percentage symbols can be acceptable where they appear a lot, so long as you’re
consistent in what you use. They’re also fine in formal documents, and in tables
within documents.
Similarly, every punctuation mark momentarily stops someone reading.
Apostrophes should be avoided whenever possible e.g. 1990s not 1990’s
If your sentences are going on a bit, think about putting in a full stop and starting
afresh. You may also be able to restructure your sentence to make it easier to
read.
Writing for the web
People read from websites differently to in print and they expect different things
from online content.
We need to bear certain things in mind when we write copy for our website to make
sure we’re getting our messages across.
To help you write good, valuable copy for our website, just follow these three
simple rules:
Be friendly
Try to make your writing approachable, professional and interesting.
Wherever possible and where appropriate, use ‘we’ when referring to the council
and ‘you’ when referring to the customer.
Active writing is always the best, so say ‘We are organising an event...’ rather than
‘An event will be organised by the council...’
Most importantly, get rid of any jargon, unexplained acronyms, abbreviations and
‘council speak’. We want our website to be accessible and helpful – we don’t want
to scare our customers away with complicated articles and difficult language.
Keep it quick
People scan read when they’re reading websites, and they have far less tolerance
for large blocks of text. Websites visitors should be able to read your content
quickly so it needs to catch their attention.
Make sure your five Ws (who, what, when, where, why, and also how) are close to
the top. Less important details should follow, from general to specific. Even if the
reader only reads the headline and the first paragraph, they should have a good
idea of what the article is about.
When you create new web content, make sure it’s broken into smaller blocks of
text separated by a break or shortened altogether.
Use headlines and subheadings to direct readers to the information they’re most
interested in. Internet readers have a ‘search and retrieve’ mentality – they prefer
to scan for the information or keywords or links they need, and bypass the rest.
Remember – if no one reads it, what value will it have?
Add value
Once you’ve successfully given the reader what they’re looking for, they might
want to find out more information.
Be helpful! There might be links to other parts of the website, other websites or
documents that will help the person find out more about the subject.
And if they’ve read about this particular subject, they may be interested in the wider
service area. Help them find those places with links!
Contact
For more information on this style guide or help with your writing, please contact
any member of the Communications Team on ext 546 or by email to
communications@nwleicestershire.gov.uk