Learning Commons:Site Style Guide
General Guidelines for Blog Posts/Pages
Length
- sufficient to cover topic
- shorter is always better - just enough to cover the content
Formatting
- one space between sentences - not two!
- avoid ALL CAPS
- use a spell checker
- break post into small paragraphs rather than one large chunk of text
Post Titles
- keep them short, snappy, and descriptive
- capitalize every word except prepositions (like a book title)
Internal Post Structure
- Bulleted lists are great
- Subheads are great - helps people quickly scan content
- Images that complement article tend to attract readers (see guidelines for finding and posting images on the Learning Commons Support Blog)
Specific Words
Be consistent with these terms!
- email (all one word, all lowercase)
- website (all one word, all lowercase)
- webpage (all one word, all lowercase)
- web (lowercase)
- Internet (uppercase "I")
Tags
- Use 2-3 descriptive tags for each post
- Tags are usually keywords that are descriptive of the content of a post
- These should be different from a category. A category refers to the organization of a page/post (page parent, etc). Refer to the Learning Commons Support Blog
Links
- For book titles
- make the book title the link text
- don't include the URL with the book title
Do this: The Hobbit (where "The Hobbit" is the text used for the link)
Don't do this: The Hobbit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit (where "The Hobbit" is NOT the link text, but the URL is also used as the link text)
Other Links
- When linking to webpages or blog posts, make the webpage title or blog title the link text
- Refer to the link within a sentence, like this:
"UBC has a great learning commons that everyone should visit."
- "Great learning commons" would be the link text used for the CLC URL
- Another example:
- Don't write:
"You can read the full report here"
- Using words like "here" or "click here" is generally bad practice.
- Instead, say:
"The charity released a report, which said..."
- "A report" is the link text, and is incorporated within the sentence. This type of internal link reads better
Citing/Attribution
It's important to give proper attribution to sources, even online. Here's how to do it:
- Blog posts, newspaper articles, other websites
- See the Links section above or linking
- When you quote someone else's text, make sure to link to the original source
- With the link to the original source, reference the site. For example, say
- "Here's a lovely article on the Topeka Ave. bridge project (from the Topeka Capital Journal)."
- "Lovely article" links to the specific article, and "Topeka Capital Journal" links to the newspaper's main site
- Images
- If using an image from flickr, photobucket, or some other photo sharing service, include some type of attribution/pointer back to the original photo at the end of the article (i.e., "photo courtesy of JimBob" - "JimBob" would link back to the original photo).
- Use photos with a Creative Commons license . To find an image, see Learning Commons:Student Orientation/Finding Content#Images
- Videos
- Include some type of link/attribution/pointer back to the original video (i.e., link to the YouTube video if you use a video from YouTube)
- How much of a quote can I do?
- There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work."
- Canada's rules are around "fair dealing" - need to check to see if this complies
- Don't quote the whole thing!
Citation Style
*Please Note: We usually cite in the APA format.