Writing for WMNow (email)
When writing email content or WMNow messages apply our voice, tone and style principles. Here are key points to remember:
Voice
When writing make sure you are:
- approachable
- honest and fair
- confident and responsible
- professional but always human
- kind, caring and empathetic
- proud and passionate
Tone
Remember to:
- put people first
- think about the reader every time
- trust people
- make people feel supported
- be aware of the reality and circumstances in which people live
With every piece of content we produce, we want to:
- Inform people of what we do. People value what we do. It’s our responsibility to share with them our work to keep them safe.
- Motivate them into action. People want to get involved in our work. Sometimes it’s unclear how people can help – so we motivate people to us achieve our mission and get involved.
Style
Follow these style and format guidelines to make your emails clear and easy to read.
Use clear headers and structure your email
Put the most important information first. Place similar topics in the same paragraph, and clearly separate different topics with headings.
This helps create a hierarchy and organise ideas in a logical way. This also helps people scan and understand your email quickly.
Headers should be clear and instructional. Not clever and unclear.
Use the correct header level. Headers should always be nested and consecutive. Never skip a header. For example:
- Title (H1)
- Heading (H2)
- Subheading (H3)
Use descriptive links
Write out URLs and hyperlinks how you would say it using descriptive links. Such as:
Do not used repeated link titles such as ‘click here’ or ‘find out more’
If you named all your links ‘click here’ or ‘find out more’ that is all a person using a screen reader would see.
Links need to be given a clear and accurate title so it can be easily identified what the link is about, and where the link is going to.
Do not use the full web address
If you write a long http web address link like this:
- https://identity.west-midlands.police.uk/accessible-writing/
It would read out on a screen reader menu as:
- https colon forward slash forward slash www dot identity dot west hyphen midlands dot police dot uk forward slash accessible hyphen writing forward slash
If you had a long list of links that all read out in this way it would be very unhelpful.
Use simple language and words to avoid
People have told us our WMNow emails are too long and difficult to understand Things to remember:
- Avoid police jargon
- Use short sentences and simple words
- Be professional but always human
Words to avoid:
We’re working on getting these written for you.