culture.gov.au

Connecting you with Australian culture online

Culture Portal style guide (work in progress)—Introduction

last updated 02 June 2009

• General
• Image caption text
• Accessibility and usability

This guide aims to provide style information for Australian Stories, News items and other general content pages within the Culture Portal (the Portal). Examples are included.

General

Style decisions were based on three sources:

• Snooks & Co 2002, Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 6th edn, rev. Snooks & Co., John Wiley & Sons, Canberra.
• The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Style Guide
• The Macquarie Dictionary (accessible through the Internet at http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/)

Where more than one style was acceptable, for example ‘web site’ or ‘website’, a decision was reached by team discussion and consideration of the main style currently in use within the Portal.

If a style issue is not addressed in this guide please refer to the Style manual for authors, editors and printers for further information.

Image caption text

The style for image captions was based on the style used by national collection institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of NSW.

Accessibility and usability

Guiding principles from Vision Australia and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for accessibility and usability were considered with the following style components.

Size

Images are reduced to the lowest acceptable resolutions to assist visitors with slow connection speeds.

Italics

The tag <em> is used, rather than <i>, to assist interpretation by screen readers.

Bold text

The tag <strong> is used, rather than <b>, to assist interpretation by screen readers.

Link list

Links that are present in the Story text are also listed under 'Useful links' to assist accessibility.