Avoid using internal university terms or language that a user might not understand, such as DOFA. Think what specific words a user might type into the search engine when creating a web page.   

For example, if your page contains information on wellbeing support for students with neurodivergent disabilities, ask yourself: how would a user be likely to describe what they’re looking for? It is likely that users – and therefore search engines – will regard a page titled ‘Wellbeing support for students with neurodivergent disabilities in xxxxx’ as being more relevant than simply ‘Support’.  

For a more rigorous approach, the Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner Tool is a powerful way of seeing what keywords rank well and how much competition there is for those keywords. 

Users look for the information they need by typing in search terms. Search engines will then search the internet for content results that are relevant to those terms.  

If your webpage is to stand the best chance of showing up in those results, it’s important that the content contains words that closely match the kind of terms your intended audience will be looking for SE these are called keywords.  

Student News content is written for current students at Manchester, but some articles may be written for a specific group within this audience. Ask yourself: Who are you writing for? How will you provide the information that they want?  

When creating headings and subheadings, make sure they:  

• are clear, descriptive and informative; 
• contain keywords as early as possible; 
• are unique to your site and your offering, where possible (remember, you’ll be competing with other universities for search engine rankings).  

Example: 

Rather than a vague heading like ‘Never OK’, use ‘Never OK: how to report sexual harassment or violence at Manchester’. This heading tells a user landing on the webpage exactly what the content is about and who it is aimed at.

Avoid using bold or italics to highlight your headings, and instead use the heading formats available on WordPress. Search engines use this when scanning articles.

You should use sentence case in your headings – sentence case is a capitalisation style where only the first word of a sentence or title and any proper nouns are capitalised, with the rest of the words in lowercase.

Use H1 for your main heading, H2 for the first subheading and H3, H4 and so for subsequent headings.

·       H1

·       H2

·         H3

·         H4

·         H5

These formats are also available on Word:

Well-written copy that contains the most relevant information as early as possible, coupled with keywords in the headers and sub headers, should ensure that your page performs well for SEO and user-experience.  

Remember, users skim content so they can quickly determine whether they have found the information they are looking for.  

If you have some very important information or a key message (for example, the application opening date of a scholarship or when an event is taking place) always write this copy at the top of the page – a web editor will be able to display it in a format that highlights the content is very important.  

The content of your article will determine the most suitable word count. As a general rule, blog posts are between 400 and 600 words; however, for posts detailing events or announcements they will be shorter.

• Events and announcements: 200-400 words
• News: 400-600 words
• Advice and features: 600+

Avoid writing more than 800 to 1,000 words for a single blog post. If your article is this length or longer, speak to your editor about breaking it up into a series.

Hyperlinks allow users to visit another webpage or download a document by clicking on a piece of highlighted text. For both accessibility and SEO purposes, it’s important to make it clear to the user where they’ll be taken to if they click the link. 

Correct: 

Our Manchester Leadership Programme could form part of your degree, blending community volunteering with a course unit that explores topics such as ethical leadership and social responsibility. You could also combine your studies with a year abroad via the Manchester Global Challenge.

Incorrect: 

Our Manchester Leadership Programme could form part of your degree, blending community volunteering with a course unit that explores topics such as ethical leadership and social responsibility (more information can be found here). You could also combine your studies with a year abroad via the Manchester Global Challenge. Find out more. 

Images make your pages more visually appealing and can help to bring your content to life, rather than a just a wall of copy.  As well as the lead image for your article, you can include images throughout the article to break up the block of text.

An alternative tag must always be included with an image (the popup text when you hover the cursor over an image).

The user may not see all of the alt tags on the page, but search engines will when crawling your content. 

Find more information in the section Image selection/creation and use.

Thumbnails

When creating thumbnails, use the Canva template to ensure your design is consistent with our branding. Titles should be between size 60-65, with smaller text no smaller than 55. Line spacing should be 1.1.

To add the background boxes around the text, going to effects > background > change roundness to zero, then set the colour – this means it will autosize to the text.

Images crop down on category pages , so any that exceed the spacing on the left or right will be cut off – ensure there’s plenty margin space when adding the text elements and check once it’s uploaded that it looks correct on the category page.

Only include images you have permission to use. This includes photographs you have taken or images available through the University’s own image library, Chorus. Other royalty-free sites include Unsplash and Pexels.

The page title, or title tag, is what users see in the browser tab and what appears as the main link in the search engine results. As such, it’s especially important that the text you use for this is relevant to the content of the page.   

In terms of SEO, a well-structured title tag will go a long way to helping the page rank higher. Aim to get the most important and relevant keywords at the start of the tag.  

Keep the title to 55 characters (including spaces) in length, as anything beyond that will be cut off in search engine results. 

A meta description is the text that appears beneath the page title in search engine results. Essentially, it’s an early opportunity to persuade the user that your page is relevant to them.  

The meta description should accurately reflect the information that the page contains, yet should make sense on its own, within the context of the search results page.   A limit of 160 characters is recommended to avoid the search engine cutting it off:

As with meta descriptions, there is a separate excerpt field on WordPress to add your article introduction. The word count limit for this field is 55 words.

It is best practice to write a unique introduction for this field. If no text is entered, WordPress will fill it automatically with the first 55 words of the article. This risks the introduction displayed on the homepage being cut off mid-sentence:

Tip: As best practice, keep intros to 45 words to ensure the homepage looks uncluttered.

If you have the opportunity to decide what the URL of a new page should be, this is another chance to include relevant keywords.  

Using descriptive URLs will help your page rank better and will help those who see the URL (for example, in a print publication) to understand what the page is about.   

If your page title requires more than one word to be used in the URL, use hyphens rather than underscores to separate the words, for example: 

• http://www.welcome.manchester.ac.uk/get-ready/health-wellbeing-safety/

Try to keep the URL concise, rather than simply copying the article title. It’s not necessary to include words such as ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘the’. Keep it short to avoid the search engine cutting it:

Use initial capitals for individuals’ academic or job titles (‘Professor of Public History’, ‘Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell’, ‘Ms Bloggs, Admissions Officer, School of…’), but lower case for generic roles (‘my professor’, ‘the role of vice-chancellor at UK universities’, ‘an admissions officer can help’ query’) or plurals (professors, vice-chancellors, admissions officers).

Use ‘alumni’ for the gender-neutral plural and the male plural. For the female plural, use ‘alumnae’. The male singular is ‘alumnus’ and the female singular is ‘alumna’. 

Lower case, with possessive apostrophe. If writing in full, use Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and so on.

Lower case. Used to describe a 200th anniversary; the adjective is bicentennial.

Can be shortened to ‘clearing’, always written in lower case.

Use ‘course’ for all undergraduate and postgraduate taught degrees. Use ‘programme’ for postgraduate research programmes. If you’re talking about a group of postgraduate qualifications that includes both research and taught degrees, use ‘programmes’.  The parts that make up our courses should always be referred to as ‘course units’ – never as modules.

BSc, MEng, PhD, DPhil, PGCert and so on are written using upper and lower case, without spaces or punctuation marks. If writing in full, write in title case: Bachelor of Science, Master of Engineering and so on.

First, Upper Second, Lower Second – use upper case for the initials.

Upper case initials when a discipline is part of a School title (such as the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures), research group title, course title or programme title, but lower case for general reference: ‘the geography of the world’, ‘this is the birthplace of chemical engineering’.

‘The Faculty of A’, ‘the Department or Division of B’ or ‘the School of C’, not the ‘A Faculty’, ‘B Department or Division’ or ‘C School’ (except where this is an official name, for example ‘Alliance Manchester Business School’, ‘Manchester Medical School’ and ‘Manchester Pharmacy School’). Full titles can be shortened in the copy to ‘the School’, ‘the Department’, ‘the Division’, ‘the Faculty’, ‘the Institute’ and ‘the Centre’ but, as with ‘the University’, they should take an upper case initial. Faculties, Schools, Institutes and Centres are always treated as singular nouns (‘the Faculty is…’, ‘the Institute aims’, and so on).

Upper case initials (Single Honours, Double Honours, degree with Honours). 

Lower case, with a possessive apostrophe. If writing in full, use ‘Master of Arts’, ‘Master of Science’ and so on.

A-level, AS-level, GCSE.

Lower case and one word without a hyphen.

Lower case and one word without a hyphen. 

The University of Manchester always takes an upper case T, U and M. Never write ‘Manchester University’ or ‘UOM’. General references to university or universities take lower case u. If referring to this institution as ‘the University,’ use upper case U (but lower case t for ‘the’). Always treat the University as singular (for example ‘The University is committed to social responsibility’). 

When writing about the years of our programmes, such as ‘in my first year’, and ‘first-year students’, use lower case. However, when talking about course details in Year 1, use an upper case Y for ‘Year’, followed by a figure.

Abbreviations and acronyms should be written out in full in the first instance, followed by the abbreviation or acronym in brackets (written in capitals, without full stops), for example ‘School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED).’

There are exceptions to the rule, such as GCSE, BTEC, MA (alternatively master’s) and BSc, which are never written out in full.

You can use all capitals if an abbreviation is spoken as the individual letters, such as CEO. Use sentence case if it is an acronym pronounced as a word, such as Nato or Unicef. Use lowercase if the acronym is used as an everyday word, such as awol or pin number. 

Use to indicate a missing letter or letters, such as can’t or we’d, or a possessive, such as John’s car.

Avoid using upper case for emphasis in body copy (for example: you can do this but you CAN’T do this). Capital letters disrupt the flow of text and make the reader pause.

Use between two sentences or parts of a sentence, where the second part resolves the first.

For example: The University of Manchester is living its values: knowledge, wisdom and humanity.

Can be used to introduce a quote or a list: “Professor Andrew Smith is an expert in microbiology.”

You can also use it before a quote when the quote could exist on its own as a sentence.

For example: Joe said: “The University of Manchester supports my volunteering commitments.”

There are three types of dashes used in typesetting: the hyphen (-), the en rule/en dash (–) and the em rule/em dash (—). We do not use the em rule in University publications.

Use the en rule to introduce a parenthesis – like this – or to indicate a minus symbol or an alternative to the bullet point. You should also use the en rule to indicate a range of numbers (such as 6–8 June).

To use an en dash on a PC, use the shortcut ‘Alt-Ctrl-Num –‘. Alternatively, when writing on Microsoft Word, choose ‘Insert’ from the mega menu and select ‘Symbol’ from the drop-down menu. Select ‘more symbols’ followed by the ‘Special characters’ tab, and select ‘En Dash’. See Hyphens for more on their use.

If indicating missing text, use ellipsis as follows: a trio of full stops with a space either side of the furthest left and furthest right … like so.

Avoid overuse of these. They are best used in informal writing, and are most effective when used sparingly.

A hyphen can be used to conjoin words in compound words where to omit one could cause uncertainty (for example, cross-question), to add a prefix (such as pre-Renaissance), to aid pronunciation (such as re-enter, co-opt), when writing a fraction (such as two-thirds) or when you need to break a long word at a line’s end.

No spaces or punctuation, for example ‘JJ Thompson’.

If the bracketed text falls within your sentence, write in sentence case, with no closing punctuation (like this). (If it falls outside, write in sentence case (note the upper case first initial) and include closing punctuation within the brackets.)

Square brackets can be used within a direct quote where a note from the writer is included to provide additional information but not spoken. For example: “I was playing [football] with my team.”

Use double quotation marks for quoted text, with single quotation marks for any quoted matter within it. If quoting a full sentence, include punctuation within the quoted matter. If not, place the punctuation outside. For example:

She added: “For anyone who’s ever thought ‘I can do that’, this event will be the perfect opportunity to put their skills to the test.”

Use single quotation marks for words that are new or unusual within the context.

For example: The researchers have demonstrated a new technique that allows them to ‘write’ membranes directly on to a graphene surface.

After a full stop, insert one character space before starting your next sentence.

Use paragraph spacing when typing in Microsoft Word; if you prefer to type without this, insert a single line’s space between paragraphs.

A semicolon can be used to join two independent clauses that can stand alone.

For example: “I go to the University Library to study; it’s the only way I can concentrate.”

Titles take an upper case initial, such as Professor Duncan Ivison, as do job titles when used in conjunction with an individual’s name, such as Jonathan Murray, Director of Marketing and Development at the Students’ Union. If you’re talking about a title in generic terms, use lower case (‘two new professors were appointed today’, ‘five of the University’s vice-presidents also hold the position of Dean in their Faculties’).

Note the use of commas in the sentences below – if there’s only one person who holds the position, use commas; if there are more than one, you do not need commas. 

• The University’s Professor of Pop Culture, Jon Savage, was formerly a music journalist. (There is only one University Professor of Pop Culture.)
• The former music journalist, Jon Savage, has been appointed as the University’s Professor of Pop Culture. (There are many former music journalists.)

Avoid using bold, italic or underlining for emphasis. Order your information so that the stress falls in the right place without the need to impose different formatting, which can clutter the page or alter the tone. If you want a sentence to stand out from the rest of the text, try setting it as a new paragraph.

Use sentence case for headings and subheadings. For example:

Contact a representative from the University

Lists, like all text, should be grammatically sound. Check that each entry follows logically and grammatically from the introductory sentence. A simple list of one-word entries following an introductory sentence ending with a colon requires no punctuation apart from a final full stop at the end. For example:

 You can get to the city centre easily by:

• bus
• tram
• rail.

For lists with longer entries, there are two possibilities. Firstly, the preceding text ends with a colon and the list continues the sentence, each entry beginning with a lower-case letter and ending with a semi-colon, except the final entry, which ends with a full stop. For example: 

Our IT facilities and services include:

• more than 3,200 student PCs accessing a huge range of software, academic data and resources from across the world;
• 24/7 access to computers at the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons;
• dedicated IT Service Desk support, including a 24/7 telephone helpline.

Secondly, the introductory sentence ends with a full stop and each entry is composed of one or more full sentences, all beginning with a capital and ending with a full stop. For example:

Our fundraising has contributed to a wide range of the charity’s successes.

• We worked with locals to find out what support was needed in their area. We also run a drop-in chat session.
• We collaborated with volunteers to improve local areas, including by gardening and litter picking.

Do not mix these two styles. Use bullets at the first level, followed by indented bullets at the second level (as in the example above).

When writing for Student News, you do not need to write out web addresses in full. Just write the name of the web page you want to direct users to and hyperlink the text to the relevant URL.

For example, rather than writing:

Read more about becoming a student at Manchester at http://www.welcome.manchester.ac.uk/get-ready/become-a-student/.

write:

Read more about becoming a student at Manchester on our Welcome site.

Avoid using wording such as ‘click here for more information’ – instead, add hyperlinks to the meaningful words. For example:

News of the graphene project comes less than a month after professors Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov were awarded the freedom of the city.

Joan Smith, 22 (not “aged 22”).

A 22 year-old woman; a 22-year-old; 22 years old.

The woman was in her 20s.

When referring to age groups, such as the over-50s or under-16s, note that these groupings sometimes don’t include people who are 50 or 16. In this case saying 50 or over, or 16 and above can work better.

31 October 2007 (no punctuation and no ‘th’, ‘nd’ or ‘st’ on the number).

Friday, 31 October 2007 (the day of the week, comma after the day of the week).

Centuries: fourth century, 12th century (lower case c).

For academic and financial years, use 2015/16, 2016/17 and so on.

We use the metric system for weights and measurements, with a conversion wherever this is helpful to the reader. However, we use miles (written out in full) for distances, followed by a conversion to km.

Write metres out in full rather than using m, wherever you need to avoid confusion with the shortened version of million. For temperatures, angles and so on, use the degree symbol (°).

£500, £5,000, £5 million (space after the number, lower case ‘m’. Can be abbreviated to £5m in tables). Use the £ symbol when talking about sums of money, but the word ‘pound’ when talking about the currency.

One to ten are written as words. 

Exceptions to this rule are:

• page numbers;
• percentages or other measurements (for example 2%, 3cm, 5kg – no space between the figure and the unit of measurement);
• sets of numbers where one or more of them is higher than ten;
• numbers that include a fraction or a decimal point.

Numbers 11 and upwards are expressed in figures.

Ordinal numbers are treated the same as cardinal numbers: first, fifth, 11th, 21st and so on.

Avoid starting a sentence with a number. If you can’t avoid it, write the number as words. For example: ‘Twenty-five Nobel Prize winners have worked or studied at Manchester’. This can become unsightly with longer numbers, so try to rewrite your sentence to get around it, such as ‘The University has been home to 25 Nobel Prize winners’.

Use commas in numbers over 1,000, before the hundred (9,500, 120,000).

For millions and billions, write the full word ‘million’ preceded by a numeral, such as 2 million people. Note that a billion equates to 1,000 million, not ‘1 million million’. If space is an issue, such as in a table, use 2m, 5bn and so on.

Use am and pm with no space after the number. 7.30am, 4pm, 4.15pm.

Where it helps to avoid confusion, use ‘noon’ rather than 12pm and ‘midnight’ in place of 12am.

Use the % sign rather than ‘per cent’ or ‘percent’.

Write as follows: 2013/14, 2014/15 and so on.

Not ‘amongst’.

For example, changes to the exam guidelines had no effect (noun) on the number of mistakes made during marking; the number of mistakes was not affected (verb) by changes to the exam guidelines; we hope to effect (verb) a change to resolve this issue. 

Don’t use ‘&’. Write ‘and’.

Britain, UK or Great Britain?

Britain, or the UK, comprises England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Great Britain comprises England, Wales and Scotland only. Choose the relevant one for your purpose.

Team, group, family, committee: whether you treat these as singular or plural depends on the context: are you referring to a single entity or a collection of individuals? For example:

The University Challenge team is in training ahead of the new series. The team are each excellent quizzers with remarkable personal records; however, they are working on getting to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

The University, Faculties, Schools, Institutes, Centres and external organisations are always treated as singular.

As a general rule, follow the style convention that the companies themselves use. We follow the unconventional use of case, spacing and so on used by the likes of easyJet, eBay and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

When writing for Student News, contractions (‘we’re’, ‘couldn’t’ and ‘you’re’) can help to create a relaxed and conversational style.

For example, “We’re excited to have you join us for our first undergraduate open day of 2022.”

Learn more about how to write in the University’s tone of voice guide.

The virus is called Sars-CoV-2 and this causes the disease COVID-19. For ease of communication, we follow the same practice as the World Health Organization (WHO) and use ‘COVID-19’ (all upper case with a hyphen) to refer to both the virus and the disease.

It can also continue to be referred to as the coronavirus (all lower case), used interchangeably with COVID-19.

While these are common and useful abbreviations, they are not helpful for all readers, particularly those using assistive technologies to access content.

‘eg’ can sometimes be read aloud as ‘egg’ by screen reading software. Instead use ‘for example’, ‘such as’ or ‘including’, depending on what works best in the specific context.

‘etc’ can usually be avoided. Try using ‘for example’, ‘such as’ or ‘including’. Never use ‘etc’ at the end of a list starting with these words.

‘ie’ is not always well understood. Try (re)writing sentences to avoid the need to use it. If that’s not possible, use an alternative such as ‘meaning’ or ‘that is’.

Use accents where required on foreign words, except those that have been anglicised (such as cafe). If removing the accent results in confusion (such as the differing pronunciations of résumé/resume), keep it. For non-anglicised words, use italic. For example:

If you’re interested in studying French at The University of Manchester, be sure to come to our open day to say bonjour.

If a translation is required, include it after the word/phrase in roman type, in brackets. For example:

The manuscript on display is a translation of De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (The Fates of Famous Men).

Don’t use full stops in Dr, Mr and Mrs.

One word.

Lower-case initial.

British government departments and agencies take upper case initials, such as the Department for Transport; those in other countries do not (such as the US department of the treasury). Bills are lower case, but Acts take upper case initials. Write the name of reports, inquiries and committees in lower case.

Takes a lower case ‘i’. For references to its formal invention see ‘World Wide Web’.

Always use the British ‘-ise’ ending for words that can also take the US ‘-ize’. 

Less indicates something is smaller in quantity; fewer means something is smaller in number.

For example: There is less money for the leaving gift than expected.

Or: Fewer people contributed to the leaving gift than we anticipated.

BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4.

BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4, 4 Extra, 5 Live, 6 Music.

ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4.

When describing an amount or number that is higher than a specific value, use ‘more than’ rather than ‘over’ (for example ‘more than 400 courses to choose from’). Likewise, use ‘fewer than’ or ‘less than’ rather than ‘under’.

Well-known figures can just be named, with their function/title at second mention (for example, Madonna, the Grammy Award-winning pop singer). Where it’s necessary to explain who someone is, write their name and function at first mention (for example, music producer Stuart Price).

A person or organisation awarded the Nobel Prize is known as Nobel laureate. 

Avoid using this where possible – we prefer to use the less technical sounding ‘a’,

For example ‘11 students a year’ rather than ‘11 students per year’.

Lower case and hyphenated where between the compass points, such as the north, the north-east of England, the west. Note that the Middle East is an exception.

For regions like ‘South East Asia’, format as separate words. 

Write Latin scientific names in italics with the first initial in upper case, such as Tyrannosaurus rex.

Write the titles of books, films, songs and so on in title case (by using upper case initials for the first word of the title and for all other words except conjunctions, articles and prepositions) and in italics. A Tale of Two Cities; Eats, Shoots and Leaves and so on.

Not the USA, the United States of America, or America (though American(s) is fine).

One word, no hyphen. Lower case, no initial cap in the run of text.

One word.

Not whilst.

Upper case initials, no hyphen.

Lower case, can be shortened to ‘will’. 

Title case, with Roman numerals rather than ‘1’ and ‘2’.

When referring to the network invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, each word takes an upper-case letter, but ‘web’ should be written in lower case when referring to a website or group of websites.