Content style guide

Who is this content style guide for?

This style guide is for officers who work for Darlington Borough Council who write content for our websites.

Why do we need a style guide?

We need a style guide so that officers can write content for our websites in a clear and consistent manner.  The style guide will give editors guidance on how write and structure pages.  This guide follows the key principals of the Plain English Campaign[external link] and the writing for Gov.uk guide[external link]. 

What is in this style guide?

This guide has 3 sections;

• The writing style of darlington.gov.uk
• Formatting content
• Content templates

The writing style of darlington.gov.uk

This section will cover the basics of how write a page for darlington.gov.uk.  This includes use of tone, using plain English, reading ages and words and phrases to avoid.

Formatting content

This section covers how you should form a page. For example using headers, how to use each type of button and how to use images.

Content templates

The content templates section will show example pages and how you should use the different types of pages that are available on Darlington.gov.uk.