Best Practices for Research and Course Guides

• Avoid All Caps: all caps should be avoided as much as possible.
  
  
• Sparing with Bold: use bold text sparingly. Whole paragraphs should not be bolded.
  
  
• One Font: Better to limit to one font in a guide. One may emphasize by other methods.
  
  
• Avoid Underlining: Underlining text that is not a hyperlink is best avoided as it causes confusion. For the same reason avoid blue hyperlink color for text that is not a link.
  
  
• Mainly Black Text: Keep to black text except, possibly, in headings. Certainly, whole paragraphs should not be in a color other than black.
  
  
• Avoid large blocks: Try breaking up the text with bullet points.
  
  

It’s important that there’s standardization of frequently used terms. Some examples:

• Research Guide not LibGuide
  
  
• e-book not ebook (E-book when used in a header or title)
  
  
• e-journal not ejournal (E-journal when used in a header or title)
  
  
• catalog not catalogue
  
  
• web not Web
  
  
• website not web site
  
  
• e-mail not email (E-mail when used in a header or title)
  
  
• and not & (except in tab or box heading)
  
  
• Interlibrary Loan not ILL
  
  
• Internet / internet: Capitalize when used as a noun (i.e. "on the Internet") but not when used as an adjective  (i.e. "internet resources)
  
  
• Database titles: Italicize except when title is linked