University Website Office

Content style guide

Quick links

The Guide to Written Style for Official University Publications provides specific guidance on:

You should ensure that your content is up-to-date, accurate, and consistent in terms of style and spelling. Your content should also be written with a specific audience in mind.

The University uses these publications as a reference to maintain style in online documents:

  1. The Guide to Written Style for Official University Publications
  2. The Australian Government Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers
  3. The Macquarie Dictionary (where there are optional spellings, the first spelling is used).

Keeping information up-to-date

To ensure content remains current, the CMS sets dates for review. Content editors get an email when the review date is reached. Editors must review those pages and republish - even if no changes are required.

Consider putting information which is date specific, such as a public lecture, into news or event sections, rather than giving it a web page of its own, as it dates.

Non-HTML documents

The University's preference is to provide all online information in HTML.

When this is not possible, files are to be provided in both PDF and RTF (not Word) formats. The type and size of the file must be displayed in square brackets. For example, [RTF File, 87.5 kb].

Use the University's content management system to automatically display the types and sizes of embedded files.

Content accuracy

Your content should be consistent with content on other UWA websites without duplicating any information available, or better served, elsewhere. Check the list of authoritative sources to see which information you should be linking or nesting instead of providing.

Before making your content live, you should:

  • Ensure that content is proof-read by a person other than the author.
  • Check all page elements in order to avoid overlooking errors.
  • Run a spell-checker on all content - make sure the tool is set to English (Australia).