Publication HubAlways think of your audience before writing and give serious consideration to providing alternative formats on request: Braille, Audio, British Sign Language (BSL), Easy Read, or alternative solutions. Keep a plain text version for Braille transcription.
Keep language simple — avoid jargon. Take your audiences into account as you consider where, and when, to use short forms of terms or organisation names. Spell out acronyms when using for the first time and put them in parenthesis at first use. Any uncommon acronyms should always be spelled out in full.
Keep sentences short (maximum 14 words) Example: Try to keep the sentences you write as short as possible.
Use good punctuation. Examples include a full stop at the end of paragraphs. For bullets that are part of a continuous list, use lower case to start and semi-colons to finish until the penultimate bullet which should read ‘; and’. If bullets are introduced as separate points, each should begin with upper case and all end in full stops.
‘Front-load’ titles. Put the words people are most likely to search for at the front and use colons as connectors. For example, ‘Income Tax reform: impact assessment’ is clearer than ‘An assessment of the impact of proposed reforms to Income Tax’.
Documents should be supplied as Word, InDesign and in addition a PDF file where possible for reference. PowerPoint should not be used to create documents.
