Our style
The basics of how we write for the Practice Centre — in plain language, using short, active sentences, and with descriptive page titles, introductory summaries and headings.Our style
Our practitioners are short on time. They’re visiting the Practice Centre to answer a question or find a piece of information.
All our content should be:
- easy to skim read
- written with our 3 types of behaviour in mind (fact finder, process explorer, knowledge grower)
- brief and bite-sized (even complex topics should be written in simple sentences and broken up with helpful headings)
- written in plain language.
We:
- say 'we' when talking about us as practitioners
- use contractions like we're or we'll
- mark up Māori words correctly, including macrons
- use respectful, inclusive language
- use tamariki and te tamaiti instead of children and child, and rangatahi when we need to explicitly refer to a teenager.
Rainbow inclusive language guide | Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission
Making content easy to read and skim
We can reduce the size of our pages and make them easier to read by:
- keeping sentences and paragraphs short
- using short words, such as 'use' not 'utilise'
- avoiding jargon
- adding frequent, descriptive headings
- breaking text up with bullet points
- putting links on separate lines.
Using active sentences
Make sure it’s clear who is doing what — if you can add 'by monkeys' to the end of a sentence, it’s passive and needs to be changed.
Example:
Once the report has been approved [by monkeys], it should be loaded to CYRAS [by monkeys].
To make this sentence active, start with the person responsible for each action:
Our practice leader must approve the report before we load it onto CYRAS.
Adding descriptive headings
Users scan a page before deciding whether to spend any time there.
We need to include enough information in each heading for a user to decide whether they need to read on.
Example:
Advising the caregivers of the allegation
Not:
Communication
Writing page summaries
We can make sure the introductory summary at the top of the page is unique and helpful, to make our search results page more usable.
Example:
The caregiver review meeting has 2 purposes — to review the approval status of the caregiver, and to review their support plan.
Not:
Find out about the purpose of the caregiver review meeting.
Tools to check our content
We can measure if we’re writing in plain language using:
- the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease Score (available in Microsoft Word) — all our pages should ideally have a score of over 60 before they’re published
- online tools like the Readability Test Tool.
Readability Test Tool
If we need help with spelling, grammar or punctuation issues not covered in this guide, we refer to:
Accessibility and usability standards
All content should meet the NZ Government web accessibility and usability standards. This ensures our content is accessible to anyone on any device.