Text & Headings

Use this section as a lead-in to introduce page content if necessary. Introductory text is optional and usually reserved for high-level landing pages, department homepages, and news stories. This text should be short and to the point. The font style of this section is predefined by our website style sheet and should not be bolded, underlined, or all caps.

Body Text

Text placed within the Main Content region is considered body text. The font style, size, and color of body text (including headings) is predefined by our website style sheet. Always use one space after periods or other sentence-ending punctuation.

Body text should be concise, scannable, and objective. A study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group on how users read on the web found that webpages are more usable when content is quick and easy to read. Use short sentences and paragraphs to enhance readability.

We encourage you to perform a spell check before submitting a page for publish. To check spelling, click the ABC✔ icon in the edit toolbar.

Refer to the Goucher College Writing Style Guide (PDF) for grammar and style guidance. Also, check out 11 Golden Rules of Writing Content for Your Website for helpful writing tips.

Headings

Choose the correct heading level (2-6) from the drop-down menu in the page editor, based on the structure of your content.

Use headings for improved user experience

Headings make it easier for users (both sighted and visually impaired) to scan page content. It's considered best practice to make sure headings are informative and that their primary purpose is to make text easier to read and understand. For an inclusive user experience, it's important to structure a web content like you would a document, with headings and subheadings.

Watch this short Screen Reader Demo for Digital Accessibility from Mark Sutton, web services director at the University of California, San Francisco, to better understand how heading structure effects page accessibility.

How to structure headings

There are six levels of section headings used in HTML code, conveniently referred to as H1 through H6. H1 is the highest level and H6 is the lowest level. Heading levels should form an outline of your page content and should never be skipped (start with H1, follow with H2, and so on).

The following are best practices for structuring headings:

H1 is reserved for the title of the page and will already be set for you by the web team. There should only be one H1 per page.
H2 is used as subheadings beneath the main heading (H1). A page can contain multiple H2s.
Use additional subheadings (H3 through H6) as needed, if there are subheadings within subheadings in your page content.
Avoid using a heading simply because of they way it looks. Headings should be structured by hierarchy.

Below is an example of page heading structure. Visit the live Climate Change page to see heading structure in action.

Climate change (H1)
- What is climate change? (H2)
- Drivers of climate change (H2)
  - CO₂ emissions (H3)
  - Cutting down forests (H3)
    - How forests remove CO₂(H4)
  - Farming livestock (H3)
- Solutions to reduce climate change (H2)

How to format headings

Heading text should never be bolded, underlined, italicized, or linked—avoid adding extra formatting to headings.
Use an ampersand (&) instead of "and" in headings

Heading capitalization rules

Do not type headings in all caps.
- Although headings appear in all uppercase on the live website, this styling is applied automatically using CSS.
- For accessibility and future compatibility, do not type headings in all caps manually.
Headings should be typed in sentence case—capitalize only the first word of the heading and any proper nouns. Why sentence case?
- Improves accessibility: Screen readers will correctly interpret and pronounce headings.
- Future-proofs web content: If the all-caps styling is removed in a future website redesign, headings will still be properly formatted.

Examples typed in sentence case:

Campus life at Goucher (H1)
Explore our academic programs (H2)
Financial aid & scholarships (H3)

Note: These will appear on the live site as all caps, but will be read properly by screen readers and display correctly in future redesigns.

Have questions about the use of headings on the web? Email the web team.

Consider voice & tone

When writing copy for the web, it's important to consider your audience. Are you writing for prospective students or faculty? Parents or current students? In general it is best to use a more informal and personal voice.

Bad Example:

Prospective students who are interested in learning more about Goucher College should commence their exploration on the Prospective Student page, which provides information related academics and campus visits. Once the student reviews this information, he or she should continue on the Apply page.

Good Example:

Interested in learning more about Goucher College? To get started, check out the Prospective Student page, where you'll find information such as academics highlights, campus visits, and more. When you're done there, head over to the Visit page to learn about life on campus.

Choose the correct emphasis

At times, you might want emphasize specific words of your text. You can do this by using a bold font weight. Do this by selecting your text and clicking the "B" icon in the edit toolbar.

Do not use these mechanisms for emphasizing text:

ALL CAPS—considered yelling
underlined—reserved for links
italics—used for book titles, magazine titles, etc.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To improve search rankings and attract more visitors to Goucher’s website, use keywords that align with what users are searching for. Since headings carry more SEO weight, naturally incorporate relevant terms in both headings and body text.