Writing for People

We often refer to our audience broadly as “students, faculty, and staff.” Within these groups are people with a wide range of experiences and needs, so we use plain language and follow accessibility principles to reach people who:

Are of various ages, generations, and cultures
Have a variety of cognitive, visual, or motor abilities
Are new to academia or university life
Are recent transfer students
Are new to the United States
Speak English as a second language
Use assistive technologies
Are guests or visitors who don't have authentication privileges

Don’t make assumptions about the people you’re addressing. No one person represents a group. The guidance we provide for writing about people is also helpful for remembering the wide range of identities that may be present in the audience you're writing for.

Write for readability

People take in information differently online than they do in print. These guidelines are based on research about how people read on the web, whether or not they use assistive technologies. The following practices can make your content more accessible.

Use clear and structured headings. Your headings should be descriptive and use a hierarchical structure.
Write clear and meaningful link text.
Avoid long, complex words and sentences.
Use plain language.

People do not read every word of text online. On average, they read only 20 percent to 28 percent of page content as they skim to find what they’re looking for.

Use structured headings

Clear and descriptive headings structure your page with a hierarchy that helps users navigate it.

Break content into scannable sections with clear and concise headings, set in the right style, to help people quickly find what they’re looking for.

Screen readers are often directed to read only the headings or the links on a page first, skipping from section to section as people search for the information relevant to their needs.

Use headings in a hierarchical order and do not skip levels.

Heading 1 (or H1) is most often used for page titles.

Headings after the page title are in Heading 2 (or H2) style.

Make link text descriptive and meaningful

Link text should describe the link destination, even out of context from the rest of the sentence or paragraph.

Link text that reads “click here,” “here,” or “read more” is unclear and often repetitive. For example, Make an appointment rather than "click here to make an appointment."

See Link text, hyperlinks for more.

Opt for simple words and short sentences

Clear word choice and fewer sentences per paragraph can make your content easier to read and understand. Even specialists appreciate simpler, clear language over specialized terminology. And studies have suggested that research is cited more widely when there’s less specialized jargon.

Our recommended reading level is 8th through 9th grade. To assess your writing’s reading level, you can use the following free tools:

Use plain language

Plain language is content that is written clearly and simply, without jargon and without acronyms.

Use accessible and inclusive plain language to communicate to people who use the library that they belong here.

Use active voice

In general, active voice is more clear and concise.

Use this: Jorge studies endangered languages.
Or this: Jorge studied the endangered language for 30 years.
Not this: The endangered language was studied by Jorge for 30 years.

Front-load content

Put the most important information at the beginning of a page or at the top of a list — a style often described as the inverted pyramid. This method ensures that readers get the most important information up front.

Adjust when writing features and stories

The majority of content we produce for the web is informational, but we also post stories and other long-form content that requires a different approach.

While most of the principles of good web writing still apply, this kind of content allows for more complex words and sentences, and may not always use the inverted pyramid style