Avoid 'local government speak'; use plain English!

Always use plain English. Authors and approvers should each ensure that content is written in short, simple sentences, written with the intended audience in mind, and avoiding jargon.

Local government speak

Outside a local authority or other tier of government the words "section", "division" and "directorate" are often completely meaningless and unintelligible to an external audience and for that reason alone you should avoid usage of such words on your web pages.

It is better to use "department" or "team" as necessary, but perhaps you should question whether it is really necessary to mention departmental structure information in the first place? Does its inclusion genuinely add value?

Avoid over-complicating text, improve readability

Our website is intended to be used by everyone. Overseas visitors will benefit from simple language as this is easier to understand:

• Don't say: "High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process."
• Do say: "Children need good schools if they are to learn properly."

Be careful about capitalisation

There is a tendency in local government to place emphasis on text by capitalising certain words to give prominence. For example:

"This team is responsible for maintaining the City Council's and Greater Manchester Police Authority's landownership Terrier. In addition the team prepare and maintain the City Council and Police Authority Asset Register in liaison with the Director of Customer and Support Services for Capital Accounting purposes. The team also liaises with many of the other property functions within the Directorate to ensure a correct audit trail is maintained of property transactions and rental payments."

• Inappropriate capitalisations: "City Council"; "Terrier"; "Police Authority Asset Register"; "Director of Customer and Support Services"; "Capital Accounting"; "Directorate".

The text reads better thus:

"This team is responsible for maintaining the city council's and Greater Manchester Police Authority's landownership terrier. In addition the team prepare and maintain the city council and police authority asset register in liaison with the director of customer and support services for capital accounting purposes. The team also liaises with many of the other property functions within the directorate to ensure a correct audit trail is maintained of property transactions and rental payments."

Only proper names should be capitalised by default - so references to Salford City Council or Greater Manchester Police are capitalised, but references to "the city council" or "the police" should not. In the same way a person's job title should not automatically be capitalised, particularly where the post is referred to in passing (eg "...was passed to Fred Smith, internal accounts manager, for reply...". See also 'city or City'.

Community languages

Community languages can be put to good use and can aid accessibility, but take care to ensure that appropriate arrangements exist to keep the foreign language versions of web pages fully up to date with their English counterparts. Further guidance on the use of community languages is available - contact the web team for details.

This page was last updated on 25 January 2012