Brand Guidelines

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Formatting

Alignment
Bold
Capital Letters
Captions
Emphasis
Footnotes
Headings
Italics
Paragraphs
Sentences
Tables

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Alignment

Avoid using centred or justified alignment. We align everything left, even headings.

Bold

See emphasis.

Use minimal capitalisation. Only capitalise words when using proper nouns (names that denote a particular person, places or thing) or acronyms. Use lower case when relevant terms are used generically, that is, when they are not directly related to a specific name or title and when they are in the plural or used as an adjective. For example ‘the Victorian Government was the first government to introduce garden watering restrictions’.

Capitals should not be used to provide emphasis (see Emphasis).

Captions

Captions should be used to accompany photographs, illustration and tables. Captions attract the scanning eye and add to the reader’s engagement of the page’s content.

Emphasis

Bold can be used as emphasis but should be used sparingly. Avoid using centred or justified alignments or indenting to emphasise text or headings. Change in font size using clear hierarchy structures can also be used for emphasis.

Other design features can be used to achieve emphasis. Capitals and Italics should never be used for emphasis.

Footnotes

You use footnotes when you use a quotation from a work; when you have referred to a work in your text; when you want to clarify a point, but not in the main text; and when you want to acknowledge any assistance received. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout your work; or, if your work is divided into chapters or sections, consecutively throughout each chapter or section, starting again at Number 1 for each chapter/section. The format to use is:

CE Charles, Living in Melbourne, 2nd edn. Pearson Education, Australia, 1997.

Headings

Use clear headings that help prompt users about the information that follows and promote ‘scanability’ of the page content.

Use Title Case to present the header text. Title Case means that the first letter of each word of the header is capitalised, except for small linking or grammatical words like an, and, the, is, in, etc.

Avoid using fully capitalised headings. For further hierarchy definition or delineation use bolding and font size changes instead of capitalisation.

Questions make excellent headings.

Headings should not be punctuated with a full stop.

See Layout Styles for more information on layout styles, headings and hierarchies.

Italics

Italics should be used when citing the complete titles of publications; periodicals; legislation (Acts and ordinances); names of films, television and radio programs; names of festivals. Italics should not be used for emphasis.

Paragraphs

Front load your paragraphs. The first paragraph of your writing should also hold the conclusion to the page or section.

In an online capacity, sub headings should separate paragraphs every three to four paragraphs to promote scanability and increase search engine success.

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Sentences

Use short sentences. Express one idea in each sentence.

Short sentences are easy to understand. To avoid long and unreadable sentences:

- break up a sentence into two sentences
- create indented subparagraphs or bulleted lists
- put qualifications, exceptions and conditions into separate sentences.

Collect short related sentences into paragraphs.

Tables

Use tables to showcase comparative information, sets of data or information that contains a lot of figures. Include unit measurement in table heading only (%, $, sqm, m, ha) not with each item in the table.