A-Z Style Guide

These style points apply to all content published on corkcoco.ie.

A

Abbreviations and acronyms

If you must use an abbreviation or acronym, then follow these principles.
The first time you use an abbreviation or acronym explain it on full on each page unless it’s well known, eg IRE, VAT, EU. Central government abbreviations should be written in full the first time they appear on a page, eg Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (first time, thereafter DHLGH).
If you think your acronym is well known you’ll need to provide evidence that 80% of the population will understand and commonly use the term. Evidence can come from search analytics or by testing a representative sample.
Don’t use an acronym if you’re not going to use it again later on the same page.

Active voice

Use the active rather than passive voice. This helps to write concise, clear content.
Addressing the user
Address the user as ‘you’ where possible. Make the best use of direct appeals to get involved or take action, eg ‘Apply for your waste permit’.

Americanisms

Don’t use Americanisms. You ‘fill in’ a form, not ‘fill out’.
Use the ‘ise’ rather than ‘ize’ suffix.

Ampersand

Use ‘and’ rather than an ‘&’.

Authority

Never refer to Cork County Council as ‘the Authority’. Where needed use ‘local authority’ lower case.

B

Bold text

Only use bold to refer to text from interfaces in technical documentation or instructions
You can use bold to explain what field a user needs to fill in on a form, or what button they need to select. For example: “Select Continue. The Verify Certificate window opens.”
Use bold sparingly. Using it too much will make it difficult for users to know which parts of your content they need to pay the most attention to
Do not use bold in other situations, for example, to emphasise text.

To emphasise words or phrases, you can:

front-load sentences
use headings
use bullets
cork County Council
where using the full name of the council use capital letters, eg Cork County Council, at all other times both words should be lowercase.

Brackets

Use (round brackets).

Bullet points

Bullet points make the text easier to read. Here’s how to use them:

wherever possible, use a ‘lead-in’ sentence before starting the list off as we’ve done above
bullets should always make sense running on from the lead-in sentence
don’t use full stops within bullet points – where possible start another bullet point or use commas, dashes or semicolons to
expand on something
don't use bullets for the sake of it - if a paragraphed sentence is appropriate, use that instead
don’t put ‘or' or ‘and’ after the bullets
don’t use capital letters at the start of each point
end the last bullet point with a full stop.

C

Cork County Council

Never use the abbreviation CCC

There should rarely be a need to write Cork County Council in full in digital communications or content. Let the fixed elements of the design provide the organisational context and branding and refer to the council as ‘us’ or 'we'.

Capital letters

Don’t use block capitals – it’s hard to read as it removes the shape from the word. Many people will also read this as shouting and we’re a council, we shouldn’t be shouting.
As a general rule capitals should or shouldn’t be used as follows:
only use capitals for proper nouns
don’t capitalise council, but do when referring to Cork County Council. Capitalise the name of a bill, act of piece of law the first time you use it, eg Planning and Development Act, 2000, but then refer to the act (lowercase) after this on the same web page
use capitals for header cells in tables
use capitals for specific committees, eg Strategic Policy Committee, but not when mentioning committees generally
use capitals for place and brand names (or follow the brand convention, eg iPad, iPhone).

Contact information

Unless talking about a councillor or senior officer, avoid using individual names or other personal contact details. Refer instead to the general contact details for the council or service. This makes sure any correspondence is answered as quickly as possible.

When writing out a postal address each part of the address should be on a new line, no need for commas to be used on each line or a full stop at the end. A map should also be included with the postcode for a Sat Nav shown. Other information about the location should be included alongside, eg opening hours, and parking information.

Council

Use lowercase unless using the full name of a council, eg Cork County Council. When referring to the council in a general way use lower case. Never use the Council when writing on digital channels.

Councillor

Website and email: Councillor Joe Bloggs
Social media: Cllr Joe Bloggs
County council
Both words should be lowercase unless using the full name of the council, eg Cork County Council. Never use the County Council on digital channels.

Committee

Use capitals for the name of the committee the first time it is mentioned on a page, eg Strategic Policy Committee, but refer to ‘the committee’ thereafter.

Use lowercase when talking about committees generally.

D

Dates

The preferred format for dates is DD Month Year with no commas or suffixes, eg 12 December 2014.

There are several other rules for dates which are:

use upper case for months, eg January, February
don’t use a comma between the month and year
when space is an issue, eg tables, you can use truncated months, eg Jan, Feb
we use ‘to’ in date ranges – not hyphens, en rules or em dashes, eg Corporate Plan 2019 to 2024
Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm (put different days on a new line, don’t separate with a comma)
10 November to 21 December
don’t use ‘quarter’ for dates; use the months, eg expenses from January to March 2014
when referring to ‘today’ make sure you include the date as well.

E

eg, etc and ie

Use sparingly and consider the audience when abbreviating as some users are not familiar with what they mean.

Where they are used don’t use full stops after or between these notations.

email addresses

Write email addresses in full, in lowercase and as active links. Don’t include any other words as part of the link.

e- prefixed words

Use sparingly as while denoting an electronic version there is usually no real need to be specific about the channel for the user. The exception is email which should always be written in lower case, no hyphen or spaces.

Where the prefix 'e' refers to electronic, it should always be lowercase, followed by an uppercase letter, no hyphen. For example 'eLearning', 'eProcurement'. Both of these examples could be more simply explained as online learning or online procurement.

F

FAQs

Use FAQs sparingly on digital channels. Content created with user needs in mind should not need FAQs.

G

Government

Always use lowercase, even when referring to the current administration.

H

homepage

One word, lowercase.

Hyphenation

Hyphenate:

‘re-‘ words starting with ‘e’, eg re-evaluate
co-ordinate
co-operate.

Don’t hyphenate:

reuse
reinvent
reorder
reopen
email.

If in doubt don’t use a hyphen unless it is confusing without one. Check the Oxford English Dictionary for Writers and Editors.

I

Italics

Don’t use italics. Use single quotation marks if referring to a document, scheme or initiative.

J

Job titles

Specific job titles are upper case, eg Chairman, Chief Executive.

Generic job titles are lowercase, eg director, councillor

L

Lists

Should be bulleted to make them easier to read – see Bullet points.

Very long lists can be written as a paragraph with a lead-in sentence if it looks better.

Local authority

Don’t use ‘Local Authority’, see also ‘Authority’. Use ‘we’ wherever possible. Where you need to use it make it lowercase.

Don’t use LA.

M

Money

Use the € symbol.

Don’t use decimals unless cents are included, eg €75.50 but if no cents €75 (not 75.00)

N

Numbers

Numbers up to and including ten are written in full (three, five, nine) unless you’re talking about a step, a point in a list or another situation where using the numeral makes more sense: ‘in point 1 of the design instructions’, for example.
11 and over are given in figures unless the number starts a sentence, when it should be written out in full (Thirty-four, for example) (except where it starts a title or subheading).
For numerals over 999 - insert a comma for clarity: 9,000
Spell out common fractions like one-half.
Use a % sign for percentages: 50%
Use a 0 where there’s no digit before the decimal point.
Use ‘500 to 900’ and not ‘500-900’ (except in tables).
Addresses: use ‘to’ in address ranges: 49 to 53 New Street

O

P

Plain English

Plain English is mandatory for all communication from the council, including content on corkcoco.ie. This isn’t just a list of words to void but is our communications ethos.
In general, don’t use formal or long words when easy or short ones will do. Use ‘buy’ instead of ‘purchase’, ‘help’ instead of ‘assist’, ‘about’ instead of ‘approximately’ and ‘like’ instead of ‘such as’.
We lose trust from people if we write council ‘buzzwords’, jargon or use bureaucratic language. These words are often vague and can lead to misinterpretation or meaningless content. We can do without these words.
Instead of these words be open, and specific, by breaking the term into what you’re actually doing.

Proforma

Do not use proforma - say what it is in plain English: a template or form, for example. Be specific about what to do with it.

Q

Quotes and speech marks

A quotation mark should be included at the start of reported direct speech and then at the start of subsequent paragraphs, closed only at the end of the quoted section.

Single quotes: Use in headlines, for unusual terms and when referring to publications.

Double quotes: Use in body text for direct quotations.

Block quotes: Use the blockquote styling for quotes longer than a few sentences.

S

Sentence length

Don’t use long sentences – check any sentence of more than 25 words with a view to splitting it to make it shorter.

Spaces

Use only one space after a full stop, not two.

Steps

Use numbered steps instead of bullet points to guide a user through a process. You don’t need a lead-in line and you can use links and downloads. Each step ends with a full stop because each step should be a complete sentence.

(see also ‘Bullet points’ and ‘Lists’)

Summaries (web page summaries)

Summaries should:

be 140 characters or less
end with a full stop
not repeat the title or body text
be clear and specific.

T

Telephone numbers

Use ‘Telephone: (021) 111 1111, or ‘Mobile: (111) 111 1111, not Tel: or Mob:.

When a number is memorable, group the numbers into easily remembered units, eg 0818 372 772.

Times

Use the 12-hour-clock.

Only use the decimal where minutes are needed, eg 11.30 am, 11 am.

Don’t use 12 am or 12 pm, avoid confusion by using midnight or noon, eg 12 noon

Where a duration is needed use ‘to’, eg 2 pm to 3 pm.

Titles

Page titles should:

be no longer than 65 characters
be unique, clear and descriptive
be front-loaded and optimised for search
use a colon to break up longer titles
not contain dashes or slashes
not have a full stop at the end
not use acronyms unless very well-known, eg EU
use capitalisation as set out in this style guide.

Tone of voice

Write conversationally – picture the user and write as if you were talking to them one-to-one but with the authority of someone who can actively help.

U

URLs

URLs (web addresses) are important both as a navigation tool for users and as an element in SEO. URLs should:

be semantic, reflecting the site structure and being intuitively meaningful to non-expert users
be lowercase
be as short as possible with superfluous words such as 'and', 'a', 'an', and 'the' removed
use words and not contain acronyms wherever possible
use dashes to separate words to ensure they are easy to read
use the verb stem where possible - eg /apply instead of /applying.

Short URLs

Short, vanity or friendly URLs are redirects which sit at the top level of a site and resolve to a ‘full’ URL.

Short URLs should only be created when needed for significant offline marketing and promotion where users are required to type them in. By default, short URLs do not use hyphens.

For online promotion and linking, full URLs should be used.

W

‘We…’

Use we wherever possible to keep the tone conversational. The fixed elements of the web page, such as the header, will give the reassurance or confirmation that ‘we’ refers to Cork County Council. We shouldn’t refer to departments or teams in content unless it is vital to the customer for the information they’re reading or for them to access the service.

Words to Avoid

By being open and specific you avoid metaphors and unnecessarily complicated language. By using plain English the information on corkcoco.ie will be faster to read and easier to understand, helping our users to do what they need to do faster.

Y

‘You…’

Refer to users as ‘you’ so they feel we’re talking to them personally.