For example: We have a common guide for the whole of GOV.UK, covering the basics for anything under the GOV.UK url. Most importantly, it's *so* user-centred and it's going to make things better. User needs. ... Book traversal links for Content style guide. posted on Government services should be consistent, so users don't have to learn a new interface every time. It's often better to refer to a term from the full name or title as shorthand - such as 'the regulations' for 'Environmental Information Regulations', instead of 'EIRs'. Oxford University Press. A few weeks ago Sarah Richards and Ben Terrett visited the Government Security Secretariat (GSS) to talk about copywriting and the GOV.UK style guide… posted on That's how progress is made! Please use the GDS Service Standard So as a Regional Relationship Manager for the Government Digital Service, GDS, based in Leeds, we’re here to sort of open doors to GDS, raise awareness of the support that's available from GDS and to connect people where it's beneficial to support digital transformation. So we’re phasing them out. Jo Allen Though there is overlap between the two, ‘user interface’ aspects are concerned with how reading on-line affects how language is structured and organised, whereas ‘editorial’ aspects of content presentation cover writing style and posted on Find out how your organisation is impacted at GOV.UK/accessibility-regulations. So as a guide at GDS, we use a minimum point size of 12 for a document and 32 for presentations. From their first blog post in March 2011: “This new organisation will be the centre for digital government in the UK, building and championing a ‘digital culture’ that puts the user first and delivers the best, low cost public services possible. Regarding: "do not let caveats dictate unwieldy grammar – eg say ‘You can’ rather than ‘You may be able to’" but to me 'you can' means that it is entirely possible and 'you may be able to' means 'there's a chance I can but it's not set in stone'. on 02 July 2012. And I agree with Andy that "should've" (or "could've" or "would've") is never good. This post is by Angela Morrison.. Will be keeping my eye out for the update. Leyla Kee-McParlin of the Disclosure and Barring Service talks about the challenges of making services accessible and inclusive, and how that can be applied to other services, by using teams’ existing skills, but getting help from specialists where needed. The Local Government Digital Service Standard has now been deprecated. posted on Style guide. It's about rhythym, I think: how does it sound when read aloud? Security, clarity and the style guide Posted by: Ben Aung , Posted on: 19 August 2013 - Categories: Digital engagement , GDS team A few weeks ago Sarah Richards and Ben Terrett visited the Government Security Secretariat (GSS) to talk about copywriting and the GOV.UK style guide. GDS is offering up … I've seen the guidelines and now I get where some of them come from: user submissions. Jon on 17 July 2012, We should retain the distinction between "such as" and "like" - it's useful. We don’t make style decisions on a whim. Karwai Pun is an interaction designer currently working on Service Optimisation to make existing and new services better for our users. Online resources In 1.3, second paragraph, third bullet, you say "use Google Insights". SPEAK UP, I CAN'T HEAR YOU. Here are the main talking points from the event. A message for Sarah Richards, Content Design Lead on the *Delivery* team - I thought you said only pizzas, post and services are delivered? Meet the Digital Service Standard. There doesn't seem to be any coherent structure to the guide, which will make it hard to refer to - it feels like someone copied it down from a bunch of post-its. ... “This new organisation will be the centre for digital government in the UK, building and championing a ‘digital culture’ that puts the user first and delivers the best, low cost public services possible. Sarah, I've written a post on my Verbal Refuse blog (www.verbalrefuse.com) about the style guide. posted on Public sector organisations have a legal duty to make websites accessible. I agree, Helen. Government digital publishing. Point 13 in the Digital by Default Service Standard says:. I'm especially interested in learning about your decision making process, like how you built the Plain English list. We found Chromebooks easier to handle as they store everything in the Cloud. I just want to give my wholehearted approval to the suggestion to make it in alphabetical order. In February 2020, the New Style Jobseeker’s Allowance service (JSA) was in a private beta stage, dealing with around 10% of new applications. Thanks. This includes: new (or recently absent) developers who want to get up to speed on progress; interested external parties who want to follow progress of the project Find out how your organisation is impacted at, GOV.UK service and product owners need to upload an, The Document Checking Service: trialling online passport validity checks. "going forward" - which other direction do you think time travels? " Working and thinking in this new way will help the CCS policy team to deliver government contracts for the 21st century, as well as better practices in commercial law. Acronyms - I'd go further and say to avoid coining new acronyms/initialisms, and not use ones with which users will be unfamiliar. But I have one bug-bear that I would like to put forward for consideration: I don’t want anyone to ‘assist’ me, I want someone to ‘help’ me. It seems a lot of hard work to start it from scratch - there are many established, excellent style guides which could be used as a foundation, then add the gov.uk issues as extra points in the guide. We lead the digital transformation of government. In January's episode of the GDS podcast, Laura Stevens, Creative Content Producer at GDS, speaks to Chris Heathcote, Product Manager and Designer at GDS, and Rianna Fry, Senior Campaigns Manager at GDS, about accessibility, and how regulations make services better for everyone. Consult with Stakeholder" - why do we have to ask Van Helsing's assistant? Transferring the setup to other laptops is also time-consuming. Our problem was that security policy had become unwieldy. I would also like a coherent numbering scheme, so I can lambast such abuses with a suitably quasi-legalistic flourish. One of the first headings in the GOV.UK editorial style guide is ‘Ever-changing style guide’. Thank you for sharing a "simplified" version of your Style Guide design process. - If your team does delivery then I'll like a margherita. Karwai is part of an accessibility group at Home Office Digital, leading on autism.Together with the team, she’s created these dos and don’ts posters as a way of approaching accessibility from a design perspective. I expect that will improve in later drafts. To help your service meet accessibility requirements, you should use the GOV.UK Design System. I was thinking about the 'South Wales' question so I made use of the council's online library facilities: "east, eastern, easterly - adjectives. The Government Security Secretariat within the Cabinet Office sets the security policies for government, these policies cover the how and why of protecting our people, information and buildings. What is said here applies equally to north, south, and west, and their corresponding forms. Comment by I also don't like the reference to making "an FOI [eff-oh-eye] request"; better to spell this out and refer afterwards to the 'request'. The standard for Australian Government writing and editing. Learning from user testing | Government Digital Service Design System. Comment by There will be others. (3) Americanisms: No problem with you recommending standardisation on "-ise", but "-ize" isn't an Americanism as such. Yep. Presumably dashes should be used sparingly, to avoid "long sentences with complicated sub-clauses". The GDS was a new institution made responsible for the digital transformation of government, designing public services for the Internet era. A content strategy sets the foundation for the creation, structure and governance of content. Personally I would be eternally grateful if you could ban the word ‘assist’ from government vocabulary on the grounds of plain English: the word ‘help’ is more commonly used in conversation, it is also a shorter word 🙂. posted on Comment by What I’ve learnt from GDS (Government Digital Service)- and what you could take from it too. ... A guide to help Australian Government teams design simple, clear and fast content. Whilst I see the word ‘assist’ in many public sector publications I have never had a social worker offer to ‘assist’ me, or a care worker ask my son if he wants 'assistance'. Sarah Richards, Content Design Lead on the Delivery team explains why this is important and how it has and will develop and evolve. But the key message is that we are also still defining formats and styles so you will see changes regularly over the next few months. Comment by We lead the digital transformation of the UK government so that it works better for everyone. Read these to find out how to write your title, summary and body copy. Have a read and see if you want to recommend the blog to fellow officials. Damien Some 'quick' formats such as answers are also occasionally too long (anything longer than 100-150 words tops is pushing it). So now is a good time to tell us what you think - please post your comments below. Congratulations on putting this together. The Government Digital Service (GDS) recently hosted a remote GraphQL workshop for around 70 people from across government. It looks very much as if you've looked at the style guides that various newspapers and magazines have published. on 04 July 2012. Is there any feedback on this, I like the fact you aim for the same look and feel across all sites, also, your focus on ensuring they are user friendly and information is easy to get to is very good, many business website owners could learn from you! There are some good resources online. The Government Digital Service (GDS) exists to make government work better for everyone. This GOV.UK style guideline could result in long lists of policy links, each beginning with words such as "reforming" and "delivering" rather than key words that the user will be searching for. Then we use an abbreviation tag in the HTML to spell out the acronym for any other instance on the page. This is an important part of the plan to become a government that's designed for the digital age. We made our style guide into a PDF (not a web page) for this reason. Splitting it into Mainstream/Inside Government could also distract from style points that apply across the site. How did this turn out? Make a great style guide the priority for your organisation in 2014. The Design Principles and Style Guide struck us as something simple and effective that had been created to help people design and build good websites, which could easily be re-used for policy work. In order to move to public beta in June, the service had to go through a Government Digital Service (GDS) assessment to make sure it met the Digital Service Standard . on 09 July 2012. In this post, Sanjay Poyzer describes how he became a service designer and shares some steps you could take to become a service designer in government.