Website Style Guide

Presenting Text on the Web - Writing for the Web

Updated: 23rd July 2001

It is vital that information on the Sage UK website can be taken in at a glance, so write for 'hit and run' scanning. There are various ways of formatting web content so that users can quickly scan the page and find the information they're looking for. The list below contains most of the presentational formats currently being used on the Sage UK website, though many of our web pages are a mixture of more than one format.

• Headlines and sub-headings in bold, with normal style text underneath.
• Statements in bold text (similar to Question & Answer style), with statements often in emboldened, Sage-green font, with the explanatory text underneath in normal font.
• List of bulleted points (usually indented).
• List of bulleted hyperlinks.
• List of bulleted questions as hyperlinks, with answers underneath.
• Numbered lists (usually indented).
• Numbered steps layout (usually indented).
• Question & answer (questions always in bold font). Answer is sometimes placed on same level as question.
• Indented paragraphs with ticks.
• List of indented benefits with ticks (most often placed underneath the overview copy for products).
• Headlines and sub-headings as hyperlinks, topic sentences underneath.
• Emboldened words/phrases once in a while to break up text monotony, but only hyperlinks are ever underlined on the Sage UK website. It is the important words in the sentence that are sometimes emboldened.
• Opening hyperlink: followed by topic/summary sentence. Hyperlink is placed before topic sentence, on same line level.
• Coloured information tables and coloured price matrixes. A particularly interesting use of an information table is the History of Sage table. To view a coloured price matrix, refer to SageCover prices.
• Product Summary Style is a web page of small product images accompanied by short, fragmentary sentences placed underneath each graphic.
• Specific web features such as drop-down menus; 'mouseover' drop-down menus; check boxes and option boxes; buttons, single text-box for search purposes and text-boxes for address details within coloured tables; are all frequently used on the Sage UK website.
• Normal paragraph style of writing with one topic per paragraph.

Mixing together several methods from this list of possible formats is generally the style for presenting textual content on the Sage UK website.