Checklist for publishing on the Analysis Function website

This checklist will help you check your content to make sure you are following the accessibility standards and style guides for the Analysis Function (AF) website.

Acronyms and abbreviations

We must expand acronyms and abbreviations when we first use them.

Example of bad practice:

This seminar is the latest in a series organised jointly by the RSS, the RES, ESCoE, ONS and the SPE.

Example of good practice:

This seminar is the latest in a series organised jointly by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Royal Economic Society (RES), the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Society of Professional Economists (SPE).

Notes:

If you think 80% of the UK population will understand a commonly used acronym you do not need to expand it on first use. Examples include: BBC, NHS, PhD and MSc.
AF and ONS must always be expanded on first use to Analysis Function and Office for National Statistics respectively.
Do not use full stops in abbreviations, for example, BBC, not B.B.C.
If a page is very long, we should expand acronyms on their first use within each section as we know users often skim read and skip to sections lower down.
When we spell an acronym out we should put capital letters at the start of each word in the acronym, for example, ‘Senior Civil Servant (SCS)’.

Bold, italic and underline

We must not use italic fonts or underline words to draw them out of text as this makes content hard to read for people with dyslexia.

We must not mix up different types of fonts, use different colour fonts or use bold to highlight words in text. It is best practice to consistently use one type of font across the whole website.

Bullet points

We need to be consistent in how we present bullet points. When bullets are a set of main points, each bullet should be a sentence with a capital letter at the start and a full stop at the end. When bullets follow a lead-in line we follow the advice for bullet points on the Government Digital Service style guide.

Capital letters

Too many capital letters make sentences hard to read, particularly for people with dyslexia.

We should only use capital letters for proper nouns and the first word in a sentence or heading.

Please note:

if you are referring to any ‘groups’ or ‘schemes’ or ‘teams’ then the names of these are generally considered proper nouns – this means these words also get a capital letter as they are part of the proper noun, for example, the ‘Analysis Function Central Team’
we do not capitalise the word government on the AF website unless it is a full title, e.g. ‘His Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ or ‘Welsh Government’
if we use the full name of a publication we give it capital letters and treat it as a proper noun (for example, the Code of Practice for Statistics)
if we refer to a publication in a more generic way, we do not use capital letters (for example ‘the code’ or ‘the standard’)
the term ‘National Statistics’ is a proper noun but the term ‘official statistics’ is not (this is the convention across multiple government websites)
the term ‘Civil Service’ is capitalised but the term ‘civil servant’ is not (this is the convention across multiple government websites)
see the GDS style guide for more advice on capitalisation

Contractions

Do not use negative contractions like can’t and don’t. Many users find them harder to read, or misread them as the opposite of what they say. Use cannot, instead of can’t and do not instead of don’t.

Avoid should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, they’ve too. These can also be hard to read.

Dates

Write dates in this order: date, month, year.

Do not use ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ and ‘th’ when writing dates.

If the day of the week is relevant, put it before the date.

Write out months in full, unless you have limited space in a table of data, then abbreviations can be used.

Examples of good practice:

12 March 2014.
Monday 3 March 2014.

Email addresses

We recommend you write email addresses in full and as active links. This means the link will automatically open a user’s default email provider. Do not include any other words in the link text.

Use capital letters to break up the words. For example, write Analysis.Function@statistics.gov.uk instead of analysis.function@ons.gov.uk. This helps people read the email address. Also, when email addresses have no full stops between the words, using capital letters like this helps screen reader software read the email address correctly.

Format

We only publish documents like PDFs in exceptional circumstances. Please email Analysis.Function@ons.gov.uk if you think you need to publish content in a document format.

Reasons to move away from PDFs, word documents and spreadsheets:

they are not best practice in terms of accessibility
search engines cannot look inside these formats meaning content is harder to find
these formats are harder to keep up to date than webpages because the editing process takes longer and the editable copy of the PDF often gets lost
they disrupt navigation as if a user gets taken directly to a document they cannot navigate back to the relevant webpage.

Headings

Headings and subheadings must be tagged correctly across the website so that screen reader software can understand how content is structured.

When you use our submission form you can select the heading format from the text editor to make headings and subheadings clear. Email Analysis.Function@ons.gov.uk if you want help with doing this.

The Government Digital Service recommends sticking to 65 characters for page titles to ensure a search engine never cuts off the end of your content.

Hyperlinks (links to different webpages)

Check all hyperlinks in your content are sending users to the correct place.
Do not use directional text for hyperlinks such as ‘click here’ or ‘see below’ – this sort of text is misleading for users of screen reader users.
Hyperlink text should be a specific description of the destination page, not just ‘blog post’ or ‘network’ – this helps screen reader users can scan content.
If you are linking to a document published on another website link to the page the document lives on, not the document itself.

Example of good practice:

Find more information about accessibility on GOV.UK.

Numbers

We follow the advice on writing numbers in the GDS style guide and the Office for National Statistics’ style guide.

The main points are:

write all numbers 10 and over as numerals, up to 999,999
write numbers one to nine as words unless they are dates
in numbers of 4 digits or more use commas after every 3 decimal places e.g. 2,548
write out millions and billions and use lower case, for example 2.5 million, 148 billion
write out and hyphenate fractions, for example two-thirds, three-quarters
percentages: use the symbol with no space between it and the number, for example 6%
for money, use the major currency unit before the amount, for example £15, $76.56
write out rankings first to ninth, then use numerals, for example, 10th, 51st
when using rankings do not use superscript for ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ and ‘th’

Quotation marks

When it comes to quotes and speech marks we follow the Government Digital Service style guide.

Readability and plain English

All content on the AF website should have a readability score of Grade 9 or lower and be written in plain English. If it is not, we will have to make edits to the language used.

If your content does not contain any sensitive unpublished material, paste it into the online Hemingway App. It will give you a grade level score.

If you cannot use the Hemingway App, then use the readability tools on Microsoft Word. This will give you a ‘Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level’. How to find your readability score on Word.

The Hemingway App is more helpful than Word so use this if you can.

You can also look at this list of words to avoid from the Government Digital Service style guide.

Find out more about plain English.

Spelling and grammar

Always run a spelling and grammar check and correct any mistakes.

Symbols

Screen readers may or may not read out particular symbols depending on user settings.

Generally it is better to avoid using symbols where we can.

For example:

Avoid using an ampersand symbol (&), write out the word ‘and’ instead.

If a forward slash symbol is used to show ‘or’, replace it with the word ‘or’. If a slash is needed, there should be no space either side of it.

Do not use dashes to indicate a span of time or range of monetary amounts. Use ‘to’ instead. For example, write ‘£36,000 to £40,000’ for a salary band not ‘£36,00 – £40,000’.

Sometimes symbols are needed and generally understood by screen reader software. On the AF website we use all standard punctuation symbols and %, £, $,°, @.

What this checklist is based on

Content published on the AF website must meet legal accessibility standards.

We also try to follow the British Dyslexia Association’s style guide and guidance around how screen readers interpret webpages.

It is also important to be consistent in any online communication. Consistency helps people to scan content so it’s easier for them to find what they want. To ensure consistency we follow the style guide provided by the Government Digital Service (GDS). When something is not mentioned in the GDS style guide (for example some of our advice on writing numbers) we refer to other government guidance such as style guide from the Office for National Statistics.