Style Guide

Universal blog fundamentals 


Headlines: Aim for 12 - 15 words. These want to fit on 4 - 5 lines tops in both the main blog list view and the article view. 

Text excerpt: Aim for 25 - 35 words. This should take up five lines on the blog list view at the maximum. Unfortunately it’s not possible to see how these are going to look on the list page until you go live, so just check straight away and quickly tweak after posting if necessary. 

Blog thumbnail images: Should be a minimum of 1280 x 720, and a maximum of 1920 x 1080. Keep that 16:9 aspect ratio, and use JPGs for speed of upload and page loading, Slow sites that get bogged down by overly large assets also get penalised by Google.

SEO title and excerpt: These have to be filled in for all articles. Make sure to front-load your SEO keywords and most important phrases, but make the content read like exciting human text for a human, rather than dry, awkward text for an efficient but dull robot.

Page Layout principles

Longform

Be wary of over-long paragraphs. Ideally you want to be hitting about 9 lines, tops, before breaking. There’s leeway here, but you never want to let your paragraphs become as tall as they are wide. With such a large amount of information being relayed, there should be a natural moment to segue between points. If you spot a paragraph starting to ramble on, find that segue and use it. 

Ensure you don’t overdose the reader with text. Ideally you should use a visual device (an image, video, visualisation, infographic, etc.) to break up the text every two paragraphs. Never go more than three without one. 

Place visual elements carefully. They can be included directly underneath a sub-header, or between paragraphs, but not directly above sub-headers. That just looks weird. 


List-based articles

Work toward The Rule of 200. Each entry in your list should consist of a couple of paragraphs comprising between 150 - 200 words. Your intro and outro should be similar, if not shorter. 

Outros must have purpose. An outro that simply recaps what you’ve already said is a waste of time and words. And outro should instead be used as a CTA section disguised as a wrap-up. It should be used to encourage the reader to get in touch with us, and it should also offer them direct links to other content on the blog. 

Try to offer the reader three links to content related and relevant to the current article. Think about paving their journey. Internal links are good for SEO, and so is extending the reader’s time on our site. 


Stylistic points

  • First-person and third-person address. Both are allowed and encouraged. Absolutely use the former to create a human connection with the reader and relate a real sense of personality. The latter is more appropriate when talking about initiatives and news from Fourth Floor as a whole. 

  • Contractions. We use ‘em. Say “you’re” and “don’t”. Do not say “do not”, unless using it specifically for emphasis. You are talking to people like people talk. See what I did there? 

  • We write numbers as words, from one to nine. We only start using numerals when we hit 10. Until you hit double-figures, write it out in full. 

  • Companies are plural, not singular. They are collectives of multiple people, not solo entities, and describing them otherwise:
    a) sounds dumb
    b) dehumanises the people we’re talking about 
    c) absolves individual figures at those companies of personal responsibility. 

    None of these situations is desirable. 

  • Videogames is all one word.

  • We use the Oxford Comma. The Oxford Comma is correct. 

  • We use UK spellings, not US. Bring out that bag of ‘u’s you were hanging on to, and use them. Drop the ‘z’s, and use the second ‘m’ in “programme”. 

  • We use en-dashes - with spaces in between - to break up concepts and asides in sentences. You’ve just seen an example of exactly how we do it. We do not use em-dashes, and we use neither without a space either side. 

  • We emphasise things with italics, not bold text, not CAPS, and certainly not *asterisks*. 

  • We highlight and break up short lists using bullet-points, with a single line space between each entry. 

  • We do not use the number list. 

  • And the bullet-point format is only appropriate when each of the included points listed can be written in two lines or less. 

  • Any more than that and you’ve got a paragraph on your hands. 

  • Basically just do it like this. 

  • Do not mess with the blog’s standard line separation width, page indentation, or paragraph alignment. Those setting are right, and pure, and just, and there for a reason. They will not be sullied unless we deliberately sully them with a website redesign. 

  • You are allocated a ration of one exclamation mark per article. Use it wisely. But don’t feel obliged to use it at all. And no, you can’t save them up for later. 

  • Xbox. PlayStation. Note where the capital letters are and aren’t. 

  • “Influencer” is still a dominant term for SEO, but let’s talk about content creators as much as we can within the body text.