Style Guide for Historic England's Website

Our style for the Historic England website aims to make our web content as easy to access as possible. Generally, we follow Historic England's brand guidelines. 

Refer to the brand guidelines

But there are a few exceptions, which are listed below. 

Contents
  1. Abbreviations
  2. Capitals
  3. Contractions
  4. Hyphens and dashes
  5. Italics
  6. Links
  7. Numbers
  8. References and sources

Abbreviations

Check house style: abbreviations

Avoid the abbreviations below on the website. You can easily avoid them by using alternatives:

  • eg - for example, such as, like
  • ie - meaning, that is, that is to say - or rewrite the sentence to avoid using it
  • etc - and so on
  • c. - abbreviation of circa, needs to be replaced with about

They may be familiar to many but they’re read incorrectly by some screen readers and may not be familiar to people who didn’t grow up speaking English.

Capitals

Check house style: capitals

If you're creating content for the website, find out when to use title case and sentence case below.

Title case involves using an initial capital letter for each word – except for conjunctions (for example and, but, if), prepositions (for example on, for, by) and articles (a, the).

Use title case for page titles. Here are some examples:

  • Creating an Efficient System for Protecting Our Heritage
  • More Lifeline Grants for Culture in All Corners of the Country
  • Visit Grant-Aided Places
  • Post-War Commercial Buildings

Sentence case involves capitalising only the first letter of the first word.

Use sentence case for:

  • Subheadings:
    How can I get involved?
  • Image captions:
    Training trenches at Beacon Hill, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire (NMR24863-047)
  • Bullet-pointed lists using full sentences:
    A review will only be carried out:
    • If there is significant evidence that the original decision was wrong
    • Where there was a significant factual error

Contractions

Avoid negative and conditional contractions, for example:

  • can't, don't, won't, shouldn't
  • should've, would've, could've

People find them harder to read and they are more often misread than the full alternative.

There's no evidence yet that positive contractions are difficult to read. While that remains the case, we can continue to use them to help create a more conversational tone.

  • you'll, we'll, they'll, you're, we're, they're, it's 

We can also continue to use possessive nouns, for example 'Historic England's position on climate change'. 

Hyphens and dashes

Avoid hyphens and dashes. There are often alternatives that work better for people using text to speech software.

  • Only use a hyphen if the word is confusing without it, for example the hyphen in 're-cover a sofa' completely changes the meaning from 'recover a sofa'  
  • Avoid using dashes. Replace with a comma where possible
  • Use ‘to’ for number and date ranges, not hyphens

Italics

On screen, italics are harder to read so use them as little as possible for online content. Only use italics for:

  • Botanical and zoological names:
    Euphorbia amygdaloides
    Ovis aries
  • Names of ships:
    HMS Belfast
  • Legal case references

Don’t use italics for names of artworks, films, opera and music or for titles of published books or periodicals. Please use inverted commas instead:

‘The Great Duke’ by A Bryant
‘Monasticon Anglicanaum’ by Sir William Dugdale
‘Country Life’
the ‘Financial Times’
‘The Independent’
‘La Boheme’ by Giacomo Puccini

Exceptions:

  • See below for styling references and sources
  • Don't use italics at all in image captions
  • Don't put inverted commas around the title of the Bible or the Koran, or written works that were not published under the title we know them by today (for example the Domesday Book, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Luttrell Psalter)
  • For Latin binomial plant or animal names, use an initial capital for the genus and lower case for the species name
  • Do not italicise cultivar names but use sentence case and quotation marks:
    Pinus nigra ‘Laricio’

Use numerals, not letters (8, not eight).

Numerals are generally easier to read when scanning content online. A consistent approach across all numbers helps users, up to a point. When we get to numbers in millions, billions and trillions, then we write out the magnitude rather than include all those zeros. For example, 2 billion is easier to scan read than 2,000,000,000. 

London numbers: 020 7973 3000
Outside London: 01793 414700
Mobiles: 07777 123456

On the website we don't write it out, we use the percentage sign:
25%

Quotations

Only use double quotation marks around quoted speech, however short:

The inspector said he was “astonished” at the findings.

Where the quote is a full sentence, include the full stop inside the quotation marks:

“You might think that,” said the PM, “but I couldn’t possibly comment.”

Where the quote isn't a full sentence, put the full stop after the quotation marks:

We support the charity’s call to “give the public a voice”.

Where a quote extends beyond one paragraph, don’t use the closing quotation mark until the quote ends:

Freda Bloggs, Chief Executive of Fictitious Heritage Organisation: “The Government’s £5 million funding package is incredibly valuable for our heritage organisations and visitor attractions.

“Investing in heritage remains vitally important, creating jobs and economic prosperity, driving tourism, and supporting our wellbeing.

“There is a lot more work to do, but this funding has provided a future for heritage organisations which might otherwise have been lost.”

Use single quotation marks to draw attention to words or phrases that are used in a special sense, instead of using italics:

This ‘little’ guide means 16 pages of close text.

Use single quotation marks for:

  • quotes from published works
  • titles of books and periodicals
  • names of artworks, films, opera, music
  • articles, short poems, radio and television programmes
  • titles of theses, dissertations and reports
  • non-English text instead of italics: ‘trompe-l’oeil’

References and sources

Use the Harvard referencing style, with one exception. Because italics are harder to read on screen, we replace italics with bold text in reference list entries.

The 'Historic England Guidelines for Authors and Editors' provides detail on the correct use of Harvard style. Or refer to the quick guide to Harvard referencing on Scribbr.

Also of interest

Brand Guidelines - Historic England House Style