Style Guide

Provided below are general formatting tips.

Pasting

• If you are pasting information from Microsoft Word, be sure to use the Paste as Plain text button. 
• If your policy has a significant amount of unique heading, bulleting, or outline formatting, it is easiest to Paste as Plain Text (the Policy Library's formatting for those features is too different from Word’s style for it to transfer properly).

Spacing

• CMS will apply the correct amount of spacing between paragraphs automatically; you will not need to add extra spaces between paragraphs.

Links

• It is best to hyperlink the title of the page or document being linked to, rather than pasting the full URL (web address) of the link into the policy text. This ensures that visitors know what the link they are clicking will take them to, and avoids cluttering up the page with URLs.
  • NO: https://policy.ku.edu/assigning-urls-new-policy-library-documents,
  • YES: Assigning URLs to New Policy Library Documents. 
• To add links to your content:
  • Type the title of the page you will link to, highlight the title, then click the Link button (in the Content Editor’s menu bar), click the Link Type, choose to URL, past the full URL, click OK.

Title

• The title field does not allow rich text formatting; formatting such as bold, italics, and underline will not be preserved.

Table of Contents

• This section is utilized for longer documents that would link to specific parts of the policy text.
• Policy Administration staff can provide assistance with adding anchors and links to the corresponding Policy Statement text.

Policy Statement

• If the policy needs to use an outline or numbered structure, please use the recommended format:

• This particular structure is recommended because it is the default in the system. If you create a numbered list, it will automatically start with roman numerals. It will automatically progress to each of the styles listed above each time you use the Increase Indent button.
• Other formats require special coding, which can be a challenge to maintain.
• Formatting such as bullets may not transfer well from Microsoft Word to the CMS. We recommend removing extra spacing and bullet symbols before pasting your policy content into the site, and then reapplying the bulleted formatting using the Bullet List button in the content editor.
• If the text of your policy contains references to specific policies, statutes, laws, websites, etc., please try to include links.
• If certain parts of text within the policy require emphasis, we discourage the use of all caps, and instead recommend using Bold or Italics.

Contact

• The recommended format for contact information:

Position Title of appropriate department official (do not use an individual's name)
Department Name
University of Kansas
Building Name
Department address (street address and room number)
Lawrence, KS 66045
Phone number (main department number, do not use an individual’s extension)
E-mail (main department email, do not use an individual's email)

Background and Related Documents

• If you are adding links to any of the Related fields, use hyperlinked text as described above (Links); do not use URL text.

Definitions

• Use this field to provide definitions or explanations for any terms that are specific to your policy or may be unfamiliar.
• Use bold formatting on each term to be defined, separating the term from the definition with a colon.

Change History

• Use this field to record policy changse.
• Subsequent reviews, approvals, or updates should be included in this field as well, with corresponding dates.
• The entries should be in reverse chronological order, keeping the most current updates at the top. The format should be:   MM/DD/YYYY: Description of update

Consistent capitalization standards

• Always capitalized: Terms such as 'Unclassified Professional Staff,' 'University Support Staff,' etc.
• Always lower-case: ‘non-exempt’ and ‘exempt’ as they are used to refer to employee classifications are always lowercase
• Dependent on context: Certain titles ('dean,' 'provost,' etc.) should only be capitalized when referring to a specific individual

Standard notations

• Times: ‘a.m.’ and ‘p.m.’
• Numbers: ‘40’ instead of ‘forty'.
• Hyphenated: 'Non-reappointment'

Referring to specific degrees

• Abbreviations should be formatted as follows (without periods):
  • BA
  • BS
  • MA
  • MS
  • PhD