Publishing Checklist – Writing and Editorial Style Guide

A Checklist to Review Before Publishing Content to the University of Maine System Website

The University of Maine System website follows the Associated Press Online Stylebook (External Site) and and WCAG 2.1 AA web accessibility standards (External Site). Because the University of Maine System is an institution of higher learning and an institution that prioritizes accessible web content, consistency and accuracy are important.

Please review your web content for errors in style, spelling and grammar by utilizing this checklist.

You can find additional information and resources on the University of Maine System Information Technology (IT) Accessibility Accessible Materials & Websites webpage and University of Maine System Information Technology (IT) Accessibility Document and Web Accessibility Checklist.

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Checklist

The following is a checklist of questions to ask yourself before publishing content to your website. You may also request a website checklist built in Google Docs.

Make sure that you can answer “yes” to all of the following questions.

Links

• Do all of the links work?
• Have you confirmed no links go to a 404 page?
• Are all links labeled correctly with descriptive text?
• Are all links labeled as “(External Site)” when they target a page outside of the University of Maine System website?
• Do all links that target a page outside of the University of Maine System website open in a new tab?
• Do all internal links open within the same tab?

Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling

• Are there any conjunctions that need to be spelled out? (e.g. “don’t,” “might’ve” or “you’ve”)
• Is there only one space after every end-sentence punctuation?
• Have you removed all of the Oxford commas?
• Are all numbers below 10 spelled out?
• Are all numbers above 10 numerical?
• Do all dashes have no spaces on either side?
• Have you checked all spelling in the Webster Dictionary?
• Have you limited exclamation points?
• Is all punctuation within quotation marks per quotation mark guidelines?

Style Guide

• Have you reduced bullet points as much as possible?
• Have you defined all abbreviations and acronyms before using them later?
• Have you followed guidelines for bold and italics?
• Are all Frequently Asked Questions written as questions?
• Are phone numbers listed with dashes? (123-456-7891)
• Can a link to this page be found in more than one other page, which may include sidebar navigation?
• Have you spelled out all of the university names, including University of Maine System?
• Are all PDFs labeled as “(PDF)”?

Accessibility

• Do all of your images have appropriate descriptive alt text, unless purely decorative?
• Is the alt text left blank for all purely decorative images?
• Do videos have closed captions and/or transcripts?
• Do podcasts and other audio-only formats have transcripts?
• Have you tested the color contrast to ensure that decorative graphics, buttons and simple box formatting meet color requirements?

Headings

• Are all headings (H1-H5) in descending order?
• Are H2s written as title-case?
• Are H3s, H4s and H5s written as sentence-case?
• Do H3s and H4s have end-sentence punctuation when written as a sentence?
• If an accordion is present, are H2s-H4s used before the accordion is present?
• Is all paragraph text preceded by at least an H2?