Naace General Style guide

General Style guide for publishing across all media

Introduction

Office staff and Members intending to publish on behalf of Naace on the website, in printed documents or in any other media should be fully conversant with the Style Guide and CMS User Guide.

Xited Limited acts as gatekeeper on behalf of Naace for definitive versions of logotypes, fonts, colours and other graphical elements of the Naace brand. This includes supply of the appropriate guidance and graphical elements to the Naace Office, Members, Sponsoring Partners and third-parties via the Style guide and other documentation published on the website.

Xited Limited has the overall website management role and provides training and advice to Office staff and Editors wishing to prepare material for publishing on the website, in print or in any other media.

The Style guide must be adhered to for all official Naace publications across all media. This document includes advice on preparation of content for publication in terms of a defined range of appropriate writing styles, approved following consultation with editors and other stakeholders, in order to establish consistent use of language, workflow and content management amongst those preparing content for publication across all media.

Preparation and management of content for publication

The benefit for Naace of investing in a content management system (CMS) for the website is that content will only need to be prepared once. Content in the Naace CMS may support the wide range of Naace publishing and communication activity. Carefully managed use of the CMS should lead to efficiency savings in terms of publishing and communication activities.

The CMS will contain a cumulative, corporate resource to support Naace activity. It is essential that content tagging, image-handling and editorial standards are consistent and adhered to by all Contributors, Moderators and Editors. CMS Contributors, Moderators and Editors should be aware that modifying material may have editorial impact on other activities which use the same data. All Naace Office staff and Members of Naace with publishing rights to the CMS must take corporate responsibility to ensure that all material input to the CMS follows the Style guide and is checked by an independent proof-reader.
It is assumed that anyone with publishing rights understands the structure and operational features of the CMS, has been provided with appropriate training and support and has access to the guidance contained in the Style guide documentation.

Preparing content

The majority of Naace publishing activity is online, via the Naace CMS.
In exceptional circumstances, content will be prepared for full colour printing eg exhibition boards, fliers for use at Conferences etc.

Design guidance and templates are available for 'download to print' documents (eg MS Word or PDF) and content for print publishing. Please refer to the CMS User guide, technical specifications and templates or contact help@xited.co.uk if in any doubt.

Articles

The term Article refers to any single item which Naace publishes. An Article may be prepared for print publishing eg as part of a Journal. Articles input to the CMS may contain text and images, other 'download' files eg PDF, PPT and hyperlinks to other Articles within the CMS or on external websites.

When preparing content for publishing, Contributors/Authors and Moderators/Editors will need to be familiar with the 'Naace publishing workflow for Contributors', available for download here. Contributors should consider all these questions carefully:
Is the content to be published . . .
. . . one Article containing text-only or text and images?
. . . several Articles 'held' by a lead Article?
. . . several Articles 'held' by editorial and contents page eg a Journal?
. . . an individual Article linking to 'download to print' documents or external website(s).
Once these questions have been considered, its time to start work!

1. Research, gathering source material and writing

Once a Contributor/Author or Moderator/Editor has decided on the scope of the work, s(he) can start to prepare the content for publishing. This will involve the following activities:

• Confirming whether the output is to be published online (for browsing), 'download to print' and/or print-published;
• Confirming the schedule for publishing;
• Confirming any collaborative activity;
• Undertaking research and planning the structure for the content;
• Deciding whether the publication will be published as one or more Articles;
• Writing the content, bearing in mind the website structure and CMS input screens and/or workflow for print publishing;
• Writing the Summary;
• Setting the Article out in a text editing or word processing software application using the Title, Summary and Article Body fields outlined in the CMS guidance notes;
• Checking the draft against the Naace Style guide and using a spelling/grammar-checker to check for grammatical/style issues;
• Storing the Article(s) with any associated 'download to print' documents, video, presentation and/or images locally in such a way that they may be input it to the CMS.

NB: it is best not to use any formatting at all, since the CMS will deal with all of this. If URLs and email addresses are included, do not set them as hyperlinks.

2. Writing style

Contributors, Moderators, Editors and Authors should refer to the 'Naace Style guide' and 'Workflow Plan for web publishing' when preparing all content for publishing.

The tone and style of writing should be aimed at the intended audience: Naace members and sponsors, teachers in UK schools, academics, the IT industry, LA and government advisors and decision-makers. Stereotyping should be avoided in all Naace communications. Some examples include:

• nouns should not relate to a specific gender eg 'chair' rather than 'chairman', 'head' rather than 'headmaster';
• use non-stereotyped gender references eg 'the manager left the room, she had . . .', 'he trained to be a school secretary';
• avoid use of '(s)he', s/he, or plurals to refer to an individual;
• when selecting fictional names, use a range from different cultures and avoid gender bias.

3. Sharing manuscripts prior to publishing

Naace is likely to wish to continue to be able to 'print publish' some materials eg full colour 'glossy' publications, exhibition boards, fliers, leaflets etc. This will involve sharing manuscripts prior to publishing, laying up the manuscript in the appropriate style and managing the workflow from design through supply to printer and distribution. Contributors, Editors, Moderators and Authors may also wish to share manuscripts prior to entering them into the CMS. The print production workflow will be dependent upon the intended audience, numbers of copies, finishing (ie stapled, folded etc.), colour (ie black-only, full-colour), distribution arrangements etc.

Material should be shared via email attachment, zipped in the case of large files or on CD (attachments over 2Mb should not be sent by email). When preparing or sharing copy, Contributors, Editors, Moderators and Authors should follow these guidelines:

• Copy should always be shared as plain text ie not formatted or 'laid up';
• Images should always be shared separately, in the most appropriate format for the type of image, at an appropriate size and not embedded into documents (eg Word);
• There should be no indents or multiple spacing between paragraphs. Use 'paragraph styles' which are consistent across software applications to create spacing;
• Proportional spacing and right-justification should not be used;
• Underlining should not be used for headings. If it is required eg to highlight hyperlinks, it will form part of a stylesheet or paragraph/character style;
• A single space should always be used after a full stop for print or web publishing;
• Single quotation marks should always be used for print or web publishing;
• Italics should be used only sparingly for web publishing;
• Avoid the use of a - dash or (brackets) when a grammatical construction would be better;
• Avoid extensive use of bullet points, unless it is to emphasise that the material is a list.

4. File-naming conventions

When a team is working on a project, it is useful to adopt a common set of file-naming conventions to assist with management of manuscripts. It is often useful to append the date to a filename to assist with version control. Filenames should not be very long, and use of upper case and spaces should be avoided eg the filename for this document is It is a Naace project, styleguide, dated 24 April 2007 being version draft4.

The choice of date format yyyymmdd is an ISO standard: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date

5. File formats

The CMS supports the upload of files of any type. However in all but the most exceptional circumstances, proprietary file formats should not be uploaded. This means that users of the Naace website do not need specific (and usually expensive) software applications in order to be able to read files. It is also to ensure that files may be accessed on a wide range of desktop, mobile and special access platforms.
Exceptions to this may be when preparing training materials or curriculum resources which make use of a specific software application eg a training programme and associated classroom resources based on use of proprietary interactive whiteboard software.

6. Preparation, storage and supply of images

Please refer to Preparing images for publication.
Images should be prepared from high-resolution scans, illustrations or digital photographs and archived at high resolution in case they are needed for print production.
Images which include pictures of people, in particular children, must have model release forms. These should be lodged with the Naace Office.
Images must be free of any copyright issues for publishing by Naace.
Images should be saved as JPG or PNG.

7. Capitalisation, punctuation and spelling

Use capital initial letters only for proper nouns, important people's titles and Naace organisational structure (eg Naace Chief Executive, Primary Working Group).
Capitalise only the first letter of a title or heading eg 'Style guide for publishing across all media'.
Use only one space after a full stop.
Don't use full stops:
• in titles - Mr, Mrs
• after initials - Mr N B Jones
• in well-known acronyms - BBC
• in abbreviated phrases in lower case - km, kg
• after headings, sub-headings
• in eg or etc
• at the end of each line in a bulleted list
Don't use commas in addresses and dates: eg 22 January 2007
Use the following spelling and capitalisation:
• Becta
• CD-ROM
• DVD
• disc (when referring to CD-ROM)
• e-mail
• e-learning
• e-maturity
• e-portfolio
• internet
• intranet
• Naace
• online
• 'program' when referring to IT, otherwise 'programme'
• website

Publishing workflow for Contributors

All content will be managed via the CMS and the process is illustrated in the 'Website Structure and Design Principles' document.
The Naace publishing workflow for Contributors and Editors flowchart illustrates the process, providing a quick guide to publishing. These documents are all available here.

Summary of workflow

• Naace Office, Journal Editor(s), Working Group or Executive calls for contributions;
• Naace Office sets appropriate permissions for Members as Contributor and/or Editor;
• Contributor(s) write Article(s) and submit to Naace CMS;
• Contributor associates suitable copyright-cleared images with Article(s);
• Contributor associates other files for download and/or references to other Articles;
• Contributor checks Article(s) against Naace Style guide, validates HTML, and checks all external links;
• Contributor submits completed Article(s);
• Moderator/Editor is alerted to new submission(s):
• Moderator/Editor reviews/edits Article(s), checks use of images for copyright issues and model release forms;
• Moderator/Editor checks Classification of Article(s);
• Moderator/Editor checks all downloads and runs them through virus-checker;
• Moderator/Editor checks all links and references by visiting them, and then returning to the Article;
• Moderator/Editor checks all internal links and references by visiting them, and then returning to the Article;
• Moderator/Editor publishes Article, notifying Contributor;
• Journal Editor collects Articles into an edition of the Journal, checks all links and publishes the Journal;
• Newsletter Editor includes items about new Articles/Journals if appropriate;
• CMS generates alerts to website visitors that new Articles are published.

Articles

Each piece of content in the CMS is known as an Article and may be 'found' through different routes on the website as described below. An Article is the smallest element of content in the Naace CMS. It may stand alone as a plain text document, contain images or provide links to a collection of other Articles, 'download to print' files, hyperlinks etc. Articles will be formatted in a style suited to browsing online or 'download to print'. Several Articles may be linked together to form a more complex publication or edition of a Journal eg Primary Focus. Each Article may be linked with external websites which open in a new browser window.

The workflow for publishing to the CMS is similar to existing print publications. However, being web-based, the need for page lay-up, design, printing, distribution etc. is removed - allowing Contributors and Editors more time to focus on high quality content than publishing technologies! The Naace CMS does not incorporate a 'wysiwyg' text editor as there is none available that can produce good, clean, standards-compliant html and work across all web browsers. The Naace CMS does not incorporate a spell-checker. Contributors should spell-check Articles prior to input. Modern high quality web browsers such as Firefox have integrated spell-checkers which will check your text input before submission.

Writing 'keyword-rich' copy

The Naace website depends on a powerful search facility. In order to make the most effective use of this, Authors and Editors should write copy for the Summary, Title and Heading fields taking account of typical words or phases which visitors may use when searching for that Article. This is called 'keyword-rich' copy.

Publishing permissions and style guidance

To ensure that the website provides a coherent collection of content, all Contributors and Moderators/Editors will be expected to adhere to the Naace Style guide (this document). Additional guidance for using the CMS may be found in the CMS User guide. In order to publish content to the Naace website, appropriate permissions must be assigned to Members. These permissions will, in part, be generated from the membership database and then be capable of 'fine-tuning' by the Naace Office.

Members with moderation rights need to understand the level of responsibility that this confers. Please refer to the style guidance and CMS user guide and, if in any doubt, contact a member of the website development team at help@naace.org

There will be the option to set permissions to groups and/or individual members to support the full range of Naace publishing activity beyond this basic set of groups. The levels are:

Contributor

Can contribute Articles which require moderation before becoming visible on the main site.

Moderators/Editors

Can moderate and edit Articles. Some Moderators may have restrictions on the sections they can moderate eg an ordinary moderator may not be able to see, let alone moderate, Articles targeted at the Executive or Board.

Super users

Can do anything on the site.