Content Style Guide: Text Styles

One of the best ways to ensure that our website is user-friendly is to follow industry best practices, keep the content focused on key user tasks, and keep our content up-to-date at all times.

Use additional text styles sparingly.

Be extremely selective in your use of colors, bold, italics, and increased size when trying emphasis something in text. Don’t use more than one style at a time (for example, don’t do THIS). Adding too many styles will lessen the effect and distract the user.

  • Don’t use underlines (underlines are reserved for links only).
  • Don’t use all caps.
  • Don’t set text to centered or full justify (keep it at the left-aligned default setting).

If you need to use text styles outside of a WYSIWYG editor, please use semantic HTML tags as follows. (If you need help, feel free to ask the Web Services Librarian!):

  • Bold text should use the <strong> element. (Do not use <b>.)
  • Italicized text should use the <em> element. (Do not use <i>.)

Your friendly Web Services Librarian

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Matthew Reidsma
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Credits

Guide content originally created by Suzanne Chapman for the University of Illinois Libraries. Licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons By 4.0 license.

  • Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024 10:23 AM
  • URL: https://libguides.gvsu.edu/styleguide