Tutorials Style Guide

This style guide is intended for use in the development of workshop/application tutorials in the computing wiki.

Writing guidelines

Technical writing best practices

• Avoid chattiness or personal opinion. Insert your personality in the classroom.
• Keep it succinct. Use clear and concise language
• Try not to use "you"
• Start each step with a verb if possible. What is the person doing specifically?
• Is it easy to scan for important content?
• Be aware of best practices for creating link text.
• Write effective page summaries.

Formatting conventions

Use an Ordered List to Identify Steps

Anytime you are a describing a sequence of 2 or more steps, use a numbered or ordered list. You can combine finding a location and taking action in a single step
Example:

1. Go to the dashboard and click Appearance
2. Choose your template by clicking Activate

Navigational Sequence

When indicating navigation in the application use bold text and the > to indicate navigational sequence
Example:

1. Click Go > Connect to Server

Variable text

Use italics for text that should be replaced by user specific information
Example:

1. Enter your username

Punctuation and Capitalization

• Start all numbered steps with a capital
• Do not punctuate the end of bulletted or numbered lists (no periods)
  

Example:

1. This is my first step
2. This is my second step
3. This is my third step but I need two sentences. See Figure 1

Page layout

• See Tutorials Style Guide - Example Page Layout
• Usage of section headers must be consistent