Content structure

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Content structure key points

When planning your content:

• be clear about your content’s purpose and key message
• consider your audience and what action you want them to take
• put the most important information first in each sentence, paragraph and section
• group related content using clear, descriptive headings and subheadings
• use bullets, quotes, images and white space to add interest and improve readability
• keep sentences short (15–25 words) and avoid unnecessary words
• be specific and avoid vague language
• stay consistent by following the content and style guidance in this document
• avoid jargon wherever possible

Page titles

Do:

• use only <H1> on a page
• keep titles to 65 characters or fewer
• make them unique, clear and descriptive
• start with important keywords
• optimise for search engines
• use a colon to break up longer titles

Avoid:

• using dashes or slashes
• ending with a full stop
• using acronyms unless they are well-known, such as NHS, HR and UK

Headings

Headings help users scan and understand your content. They also support accessibility and search engine optimisation.

Use headings to:

• break content into clear sections
• show the structure of the page
• help screen reader users navigate easily

There are six heading levels. <H1> is the highest and should only be used once per page. Use the others in order, based on the structure of your content.

Tips for writing headings

Do:

• make them clear, concise and informative
• ensure each heading is unique on the page
• use sentence case
• nest headings in order (e.g. <H2> followed by <H3>)

Avoid:

• using headings just to make text look bold or large
• writing headings in all capital letters
• skipping heading levels (e.g. going from <H2> to <H4>)
• overusing headings – most pages only need <H2> and <H3>

Headings in Turas

Turas has specific rules for how headings should be used across its platform to support consistency, accessibility and ease of navigation:

• use <H1> only once per page, for the page title
• use sentence case for all headings (for exceptions refer to the 'Case' section in the content A to Z)
• you don’t need to use all heading levels, but always keep them in order
• nest headings by their level, a heading with the same or higher level starts a new section
• on Turas, <H2> and <H3> headings inside panels use the same font size and weight. Use <H2> outside panels to introduce a group of panels, and <H3> inside the panels that follow

References

Neilson Norman Group
The Layer-Cake Pattern of Scanning Content on the Web