University of Exeter Site Manager Manual
Formatting text
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Formatting text in Site Manager
Formatting headings and paragraphs
When formatting your content in Site Manager, for the correct heading and paragraph styles to be applied
automatically you must use the formatting drop-down menu in the Site Manager editor:
Headings
Headings are styled centrally and applied to the web content automatically, but you have to mark them up as
headings in Site Manager by selecting the appropriate heading level from the drop-down formatting menu, as
in the image above.
The different levels of headings allow you to structure your pages in a logical way that helps people navigate
and skim the page content. Each level is styled with a different font size. These levels must be nested in
sequence starting with level 1 and nesting subheadings through 2, then 3, etc. You should not use random
levels to create a certain visual effect or miss a level out of the sequence.
For most standard pages, you should be using the template ‘www Page with no feature image’. The Heading
field of this template is automatically formatted as the page’s top heading, ‘Heading 1’. Any subheadings will be
entered in the Main Body field, so you will need to select Heading 2. For any subheadings of Heading 2 you
select Heading 3 and so on. How many headings and subheadings you need will depend on the amount of text
you need to include on your page. In general, try not to have a lot of unnecessary heading levels on a single
University of Exeter Web Team, January 2012
University of Exeter Site Manager Manual
Formatting text
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page in relation to your text as it can look cluttered. You will rarely need to use Heading 5 or 6, but they are
available for that level of structure if it is genuinely required, for example in an official policy document
transferred to the web.
Example of a webpage heading structure using 4 levels of heading:
Heading 1
Heading 2
Top heading automatically
generated from Heading field of
www Page with no Feature image
template
Subheading of top Heading 1 www
formatted in main body using dropdown menu
Heading 3
Subheadings of Heading 2
Heading 4
Subheading of Heading 3
Do not use bold, italic or all capitals as a style on headings
Never use the ‘bold’
or ‘italic’
buttons to format headings or your pages will be inconsistent with the
style of the rest of the website, and they will not pick up any of the heading colours. You will also lose the
logical heading structure of the page, which is an important feature for the usability and accessibility of
webpages (see chapter 9 of the Writing for the web online course: Use appropriate headings). There is no
need to apply separate bold formatting, as it’s already applied in the central style. Italic is not used as a style
on any heading in the corporate web design. Be particularly careful that no extra bold or italic mark up is
retained after pasting text from Word documents (see ‘Pasting from Word documents’).
Please don’t set headings in all capital letters, as these are not very legible on screen. It makes every letter the
same rectangular shape, making word recognition slower and the text harder for people to skim read quickly.
Paragraphs
Normal style
For the correct font style and size to be applied, paragraphs of text need to be marked as ‘Normal’ from the
formatting menu. In most cases, when you type text into the main body of a template in Site Manager and
press Return to add a second paragraph, your text will automatically be formatted as Normal, and this will
provide the correct formatting.
University of Exeter Web Team, January 2012
University of Exeter Site Manager Manual
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However, be aware that if you type text into the main body field of a template as a single paragraph, Site
Manager does not format it automatically unless you pres Return to make a new paragraph below it, although it
will appear to be marked as ‘Normal’ from the formatting menu. Also, you will not be able to format it by
selecting Normal from the drop-down menu. In this case you can get around the problem by pressing Return,
then if you don’t actually want another paragraph below, press Backspace on your keyboard to delete the extra
paragraph (otherwise you will have unwanted blank space on your final page), but retain the formatting on your
first paragraph.
Bold and italic
In main text, use bold and italic very sparingly and only to create emphasis. Italic can be useful for light
emphasis of a single word, short phrase, or for titles of books or articles; bold can be effective for stronger
emphasis of single words or phrases. Avoid the use of both styles together, as it significantly reduces the
legibility of text on screen.
Neither style works well on whole blocks of text on screen as it makes them less readable, so do avoid
applying them to whole paragraphs. Large blocks of text in bold lack contrast, so actually make it less effective
as a means of emphasis. Although italic text can work well in the high resolution of print, the lower resolution
on screen reduces clarity and ease of word recognition, significantly slowing reading speed. So don’t apply this
style to whole paragraphs, and never use both bold and italic together on paragraphs either, as this is an
even less readable combination.
Formatting lists
Use the bulleted
and
numbered list buttons from the editing toolbar to format bulleted and numbered
lists correctly. You will have significant problems if you try to paste such lists from Word documents so you will
need to completely reformat pasted lists in Site Manager (see ‘Pasting from Word documents’), or you may find
it easier and quicker to type them in directly.
Formatting tables
Tables for data
Tables should be used only for displaying data; that is what they are intended for. Data tables have either row
or column headers (or both) that apply to data in the remaining table cells. The styles for tables are set in the
central University style, including the font style, weight and position of text in header and data cells.
University of Exeter Web Team, January 2012
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For example:
Use the table tools in the editing toolbar to build tables that will display the correct formatting. Do not attempt to
paste tables in from Word documents, as they will not display correctly in your pages and you will find it
difficult, if not impossible, to clean them up and have them styled properly. Please see the separate
instructions and advice on ‘Creating and editing tables in Site Manager‘.
Tables for layout
Do not attempt to use tables for page layout, rather than to display data, as page layouts are determined by
the styles and templates set up in Site Manager.
If you have a layout requirement that you think cannot be met by existing page templates, please contact the
Web Team to discuss your needs so that any solution can be in keeping with the University’s corporate web
design, and will not cause problems for web accessibility in the way that tables can.
University of Exeter Web Team, January 2012