Dates and Times

Dates and times listed on websites should follow the Associated Press (AP) Style. When listing dates, capitalize months and do not use st, nd, rd, or th. When listing times, leave one space after the specified time and list the time of day as either "a.m." or "p.m." with the included periods and not capitalized.

• Example: October 1, 2014 at 12:30 p.m.

Headings

You can have some introductory text before adding your first heading. Our body text and heading font family, size, and color is predefined by our website style sheet.

H3 Heading

Create the heading above by clicking the "H" button in the WYSIWYG editor. This should not be bold or italicized. It should also not include colons or ellipses. Use these headings to break up text for easy editing.

Do not use bold style for headings.

H4 Heading

If your content requires multiple levels of headings, please contact the web content team.

Do not use bold body text for lower-level headings.

Emphasis

Sometimes you want particular text to stand out in your content. The way to do this is to make it bold. This is done by selecting your text and clicking the "B" button.

Do not use these mechanisms for emphasizing text:

• All caps (this is considered yelling).
• Underlined (this is reserved for links).
• Italics (this is reserved for book titles, etc). 

Voice and Tone

When writing for the web, consider your audience. Are you communicating with prospective students or faculty? Use a voice that is conversational, but accurate and authoritative. Talk like you would to another human, not like when you are writing a paper. In general, use a more informal voice, which is more personal.

Less like this

Prospective students who are interested in learning more about Luther College should commence their exploration on the About Luther page, which provides information related to the college's history and academics. Once the student reviews this information, he or she should continue on the Student Life page.

More like this

Interested in learning more about Luther College? To get started, check out the About Luther page, where you'll find information such as history of the college, academics highlights, and more. When you're done there, head on over to the Student Life page to learn about life on campus.

When writing content for Luther's website, try to be:

• Welcoming, but not needy/desperate (e.g. we don’t need “Thank you for your interest…”)
• Intellectual, but not stuffy (esp. for academic department/faculty sites)
• Crisp and to the point, but not abrupt
• Modern, but not casual
• Approachable (and at times humorous), but not silly

Learn more in this article on Style, Diction, Tone, and Voice.

Ordered Lists

If you need to number steps or similar, use the ordered list functionality in Reason. Click the "Ordered list" button to get started:

1. Step 1: Do this.
2. Step 2: Do that.
3. Step 3: Do something else.
4. Step 4: Don't do this.
5. Step 5: Definitely don't do this.

Click the button again to end the ordered list.

Unordered Lists

If you need bullets, use the unordered list functionality in Reason. Click the "Unordered list" button to get started:

• First bullet
• • Sub-bullet 1
  • Sub-bullet 2
  • • Sub-sub-bullet 1
    • Sub-sub-bullet 2
  •  Sub-bullet 3
• Second bullet
• Third bullet

Use the indent button to get multiple levels of bullets.

NOTE: First word is always capitalized. Use period for complete sentences. Be consistent within a given list.