Readability Guidelines

Version 14.5 by Lizzie Bruce on 2019/12/05 09:28

A project from Content Design London.

"Imagine a collaboratively developed, universal content style guide, based on usability evidence. With guidelines for creating easy to comprehend content, we can design inclusively by default." – Sarah Richards

Grammar points

Audiences, devices, channels

Content design


The project

In 2018 Sarah Richards asked if, working together, we can create a universal, inclusive style guide. Because "style guide" can mean different things, we called it the Readability Guidelines project. 

Content professionals in multiple sectors held regular global discussions for a total of 24 weeks. This was Alpha and Beta. And it's all continuing: you can get involved.
 

Alpha

We asked if:

  • an open community of content people want to contribute to a single style guide
  • we'd like to rely on evidence for the style guide elements – and if yes, what evidence would be most useful
  • a wiki model is sustainable

Read the final Alpha blog update.

Alpha ran from July to October, 2018.
 

Beta

From the Alpha discussions we identified 17 content style usability questions. We searched for evidence to answer them in Beta.

By the end we created the first readability guidelines, identified top level findings and accepted that some style points needed further testing. 

Read the final Beta blog update.

Beta was October to December 2018.
 

Get involved

Explore and join us:

We have almost 500 members in our Slack community.
 

Editing the wiki

This is a totally open project. You're welcome to comment on, edit or create wiki pages.
The only rules are:

  • be respectful
  • make any comments in the spirit of positive open learning
  • read the wiki pages carefully, and study existing evidence, before making comments and edits
  • include usability evidence to support any edits

Getting a log in

You can comment on any page without logging in.
But if you'd like to add usability evidence please request a log-in. It may take a few days for us to set up your wiki account.

Any comments or queries outside of this wiki, please get in touch on twitter @ContentDesignLN.


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