Category: Style Guide

Categories
Style Guide

Writing Style Guide

Thank you for contributing your content to the Learning Commons!

The Learning Commons website’s mission is to be a resource-hub for students, written in a student voice, with a student perspective in mind. In past focus groups, students consistently said that they valued the site’s student-centered tone, and preferred it over a more formal, administrative style.

To help us maintain the website’s personal voice and identity, please consider the following writing guidelines when contributing:

  1. Conversational and Casual Tone
    Write as you would speak to a student who comes to you for help. Avoid jargon-y words and acronyms when possible, and opt for more common vocabulary.


  2. Limit Organizational Details
    Instead of introducing your dept/organization/unit in official terms (for example, “The Disability Resource Centre (DRC), a component of Access and Diversity, works with the University community to determine reasonable accommodation…”) tell the students, what can you do for them first. Ie. “The Disability Resource Centre (DRC) helps students with …”


  3. Bullet Points and Numbered List Are Your Friend
    Using bullet points and numbered lists help keep information organized and easy to read.


  4. KISS: Keep It Short and Simple
    Your page is meant to be a summary of what you offer students (along with important times and dates, if relevant), and should link to your website, but does not need to be as comprehensive as your own website. Focus on the “need to knows” and try to keep your paragraphs limited to a max of 4-5 sentences. Research shows that web audiences have a very short attention span.


  5. Who, What, When Where, How and Why?
    Journalists use this simple rubric to keep them on track. It can be useful to keep a mental checklist about if you’ve answered the Who, What, When, Where and How (and Why) in a clear way.
Categories
1. Wiki Style Guide

Writing Style Guide (for Wiki)

What to Include

First, you’ll want to set up your page in the Learning Commons namespace. To do that, follow this workflow.

Once you have your page (index page) set up, you’ll want to create the following subpages. Do this by adding a slash after your index page and the following titles:

  1. /Description. A brief description of your program/department/unit/service and what it can do for the students and a link to your site.
  2. /Services. The services you offer and how they can be accessed.
  3. /Contacts. Any important front line contact information.
  4. /Hours. Any schedule information or hours of service (i.e. for tutoring).
  5. /About or /Information. This is where you can aggregate all or any of your subpages in preparation for publishing on the Learning Commons. See the workflow.

Of course you may have other subpages, that’s fine too–these tend to be the important pieces of content that students will be looking for.


Making Content Re-usable

  • Keep subpage titles short.
  • Create an About or Information page with basic information as above. Make this an easy process by using transclusion.
  • Consider page sections carefully. Page sections can be defined with page titles from transcluded content, OR as subheadings on a single page. Keep headings short and top level (==Level 2 headline==).
  • Subheadings within a section should not be actual ==headings== but instead just bolded and capitalized.

    Following these guidelines will ensure that tabs look reasonable of you plan to use these on your page. Here is an example of a page authored in the Wiki and published on the Learning Commons site: Resources for Distance Learning


    Style Guides for Wikis

    Writing Guidelines are basically the same in the wiki as they are for any other collaborative writing environment. It is helpful to set a few guidelines for your project when it involves collaborative writing: Here are a few sample Style Guides for Wiki projects:

    Tips specific to Wiki formatting: Hands On: 6 Things To Know

    Thanks for your contribution!

Spam prevention powered by Akismet