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Government Website Publishing Guide - Department of Business and Innovation

DBI Web publishing Guide - writing style and tips for DBI websites, prepared by the Department of Business and Innovation, Central Web Team, May 2011.

About the Guide

This guide is a reference document for anyone writing for, or publishing to, any website owned by the Department of Business and Innovation (DBI). DBI's strategy for a best-practice, user-friendly site is best implemented by a holistic approach that ensures style, tone, grammar, spelling and formatting are consistent across all content.

What does it contain?

The guide's specific focus is web content. It provides some general rules of usage, presentation and spelling. The document references Whole of Victorian Government (WoVG) Web Standards.

The guide helps to:

• establish a basic set of conventions to help keep the language, look, feel and meaning of each page of the site consistent, no matter how many writers are involved in the creation of content
• set a consistent standard for the presentation of content elements such as headings, text, links and images
• set a consistent standard for the way content is written
• set a standard way to write commonly used words or acronyms across the site
• provide a reference point for resolving inconsistencies or conflicting opinions about spelling or word usage
• provide guidance on the presentation of content to aid in Search Engine Optimisation of a page
• ensure WoVG Web Standards are adhered to
• provide consistency for the lifetime of the site as new writers and editors join and leave the team.

How is this guide structured?

The Guide is technology - and website-neutral. It is structured so that any web manager, or content author, reviewer or editor can use the body of the guide to check for editorial principles that apply to any DBI website regardless of owner, business goals or divisional differences.

Templates, checklists and appendices for information specific to a website appear at the back of the guide.

What does this guide not cover?

This guide does not cover:

• design and layout aspects such as placement of design elements, look and feel of templates, size of banner, use and placement of departmental or State logos
• workflow for approvals
• minimum requirements for best practice advice for individual types of content (Flash maps, PDFs, newsletters, email addresses etc.)
• site-specific guidelines, which may contain additional information not included in this general guide. Site-specific guidelines e.g. for Business Victoria, are listed as an appendices or are kept as separate documents. See the BVO guidelines at the end of this document as an example

Topics covered

• Content Elements – Usage
• Addresses and contact information
  • Australian street address and telephone numbers
  • Address contact example
  • Street and postal addresses
  • Australian postal address format
  • International street addresses and telephone numbers
  • International contact examples
  • Email addresses
  • Web addresses
• Metadata
  • Standard Metadata sets
• Spelling
• Appendix 1: Checklists
  • Web page checklist
  • PDF Checklist
  • Case study checklist
• Appendix 2: Business Victoria Customised Elements
  • Headings
  • Content elements – BVO-specific Usage
  • Language and tone
  • General language style and tone
  • Application screen elements

Further Information

The Government Website Publishing Guide is available in

• pdf format (450kb). (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader); and
• word format (851kb).

Please contact administration@egov.vic.gov.au if you require more information.

Last updated: 15 February 2012 Tweet

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