Content structure

Writing content

Content structure key points

When thinking about the structure of your content:

be clear on the objectives of your content, what do you want to say
think about who your audience is and what you want them to do
prioritise content, create a hierarchy of information, leading with the most important information in sentences, paragraphs, sections and pages
organise the content by grouping related information together using descriptive headings and subheadings
add interest to you page using bullets, quotes and images, and space
be concise, use short sentences of between 15 and 25 words to increase readability and avoid unnecessary words
be specific, avoid using vague language
be consistent, apply the content and style points outlined in this guide
avoid jargon as much as possible

Page titles

Page titles should:

be the only <H1> on a page
be 65 characters or less
be unique, clear and descriptive
be front-loaded and optimised for search
use a colon to break up longer titles

They should not:

contain dashes or slashes
have a full stop at the end
use acronyms unless they are well-known, like NHS, HR and UK

Headings

Page headings help organise and structure content

Headings should create a logical outline, provide meaningful structure for the page and make the hierarchical structure of a page explicit.

Chunking content with headings makes it easy to scan and digest. This enables the user to decide if the content is worth reading, without investing a huge amount of time.

There are 6 heading levels, <H1> is the most important section level and <H6> is the lowest.

Headings improve accessibility

Headings represent a logical structure, not visual effects. Semantic elements define their content and describe their meaning to the browser. This aids search engine optimisation, accessibility and usability.

Screen reader and other assistive technology users can skip from heading to heading. This helps them to quickly understand the content structure of the page and allows them to easily navigate to the part of the page of interest to them. They rely on tags to identify headings.

Text that is bold or emphasised is not interpreted as a heading unless you use the <H1> to <H6> mark-up.

Tips on using headings

Headings should be clear, concise, informative and different to other headings on a page. Duplicate headings can exist on separate pages, but each heading should be unique on the same page.

Do:

make headings brief, clear, informative and unique
ensure headings are descriptive of its section content
look at the headings on the page and ask yourself if you would understand the main idea of the page
optimise headings carefully to improve user engagement
nest headings by their rank or level

Avoid:

using heading tags just to make your text look BIG or bold
using all capitals in a heading
using bold instead of a heading
skipping heading ranks, for example, a <H2> should not be directly followed by a <H4>
overusing headings, generally, most pages would not need more than <H2> or <H3>

Headings in Turas

Turas uses the Heading Level 1 <H1> for page titles. Do not use more than one <H1> per page. It is not necessary to use all heading levels, but do use headings in order. Nest headings by their rank or level. Headings with an equal or higher rank start a new section.

Headings on Turas applications should be written in sentence case. There are a few exceptions to this rule, for more details, have a look at the 'Case' section of our content A to Z.

Because of the diverse page structures that occur across the Turas platform, <H2> and <H3> headings within panels will use the same font-size and weight. This is to support the multitude of applications, both old and new. This approach allows you to use a <h2> heading outside of panels and an <H3> for the panels structured below that <H2>. <H2> headings that sit outside panels should be referring to the group of panels below.

References

Neilson Norman Group
The Layer-Cake Pattern of Scanning Content on the Web

Overview

Content A to Z