Learning Commons:Writing Guidelines

Learning Commons Writing Style Guide

Thank you for contributing your content to the Learning Commons!

The Learning Commons website's mission is to be a resource-hub for students, written in a student voice, with a student perspective in mind. In past focus groups, students consistently said that they valued the site's student-centered tone, and preferred it over a more formal, administrative style.

To help us maintain the website's personal voice and identity, please consider the following writing guidelines when contributing:

1. Conversational and Casual Tone
   • Write as you would speak to a student who comes to you for help. Avoid jargon-y words and acronyms when possible, and opt for more common vocabulary.
   • Avoid using acronyms as much as possible. This is because people who are not familiar with the CLC might not understand what they stand for. For example, try using words like 'student staff' instead of 'CLCA'.
   • Avoid sounding too severe. The CLC's role in UBC's mediascape is to be primarily peer-oriented, and sounding too stern can take away from that. Even when communicating serious subjects, such as rules, try to frame it in a friendly way. When in doubt, run your wording past the staff team for feedback!
2. Bullet Points and Numbered Lists are Your Friend
   • Check this page for help with list creation basics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:List
3. KISS: Keep It Short and Simple
   • Your page or blog is meant to be a summary of what you offer students (along with important times and dates, if relevant), and it can link to websites if relevant, but does not need to be as comprehensive as the website.
   • Focus on the "need to knows" and try to keep your paragraphs limited to a max of 4-5 sentences. Research shows that web audiences have a very short attention span.
   • Blog posts should not exceed 500 words or so.
4. Who, What, When, Where and How (and Why)
   • Journalists use this simple rubric to keep them on track. It can be useful to keep a mental checklist about if you've answered the Who, What, When, Where and How (and Why)in a clear way.
   • Avoid making definitive, declarative statements about our space, the availability, or the hours. A lot of factors linked to the physical space undergo changes rapidly and constantly so it is best to avoid putting it on a graphic. Instead, you can mention where people can go to check that information.

Blog Post Rules

• Blog posts should be between 250-500 words.
• Unless you are doing a lot of research, focus on reflections about your personal experiences and opinions.
  • (meaning you should state why you are writing about this topic, your own personal experience of this topic, etc.).
• The student experience (of resources, services, learning, and work/personal experience) is our own valuable, unique contribution to UBC's online landscape.
• When writing about resources, focus on WHY someone would want to access these resources, rather than just the resources themselves.
• All blog posts must be approved before you begin writing them.
• Blog post proposal: 1-2 paragraphs on what you plan to write about, any resources you plan to recommend ( focus on UBC, CLC resources first!)

Style Guides for Creating Pages

What to Include

First, you'll want to set up your page in the Learning Commons namespace. For a page follow this workflow.

Once you have your page (index page) set up, you'll want to create the following subpages. Do this by adding a slash after your index page and the following titles:

1. /Description. A brief description of your program/department/unit/service and what it can do for the students and a link to your site.
2. / Services. The services you offer and how they can be accessed.
3. /Contacts. Any important front line contact information.
4. / Hours. Any schedule information or hours of service. (ie. for tutoring)
5. /About or /Information. This is where you can aggregate all or any of your subpages in preparation for publishing on learningcommons.ubc.ca. See the workflow.

Of course you may have other subpages, that's fine too - these tend to be the important pieces of content that students will be looking for.

Making Content Re-usable

• keep subpage titles short
• create an About or Information page with basic information as above. Make this an easy process by using transclusion.
• consider page sections carefully. Page sections can be defined with page titles from transcluded content, OR as subheadings on a single page. Keep headings short and top level (==Level 2 headline==).
• subheadings within a section should not be actual ==headings== but instead just bolded and capitalized.

Following these guidelines will ensure that tabs look reasonable of you plan to use these on your page. Here is an example of a page authored in the wiki and published on the learning commons site: Resources for Distance Learning

Style Guides for Wikis

Writing Guidelines are basically the same in the wiki as they are for any other collaborative writing environment. It is helpful to set a few guidelines for your project when it involves collaborative writing: Here are a few sample Style Guides for Wiki projects:

• Wikinews Style Guide
• Wikipedia Manual of Style

Tips specific to wiki formatting: Documentation:MediaWiki_Basics/Hands_On:_6_Things_To_Know

Thanks for your contribution!