This resource is intended for all Travis County staff and provides guidelines and best practices for generating written content. It covers tone, grammar, punctuation, formatting, and more.
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Do | Don’t | Notes |
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Learn more about our services. | Click here for more info. | Hyperlinking the text “our services” lets readers know they can expect to be taken to a page specific to services. On the other hand, the text “here” can refer to any number of topics or subject matter. |
Learn more about our services. | Learn more about our services. | Lengthy hyperlinked text can cause confusion and negatively impacts the discoverability of content. Short descriptive text helps improve the discoverability and readability of content. |
Once the affidavit is signed by a notary, please submit it to the District Clerk’s Office. | Once the affidavit is signed by a notary, please submit it to the District Clerk’s Office. Visit their website at https://www.traviscountytx.gov/district-clerk | The hyperlinked text “District Clerk’s Office” complies with accessibility standards as the text is easily picked up by users who rely on screen readers. A URL hyperlink impacts the readability of the text as it is not easily or immediately recognizable where the URL redirects. |
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Place a period outside the closing parenthesis if the material inside is not a complete sentence (such as this fragment). (An independent parenthetical sentence, like this one, takes a period before the closing parenthesis.)
When a phrase placed in parentheses (like this one) could qualify as a complete sentence but depends on the surrounding material, do not capitalize the first word or end with a period.
Do not use parentheses to denote a political figure's party affiliation and jurisdiction. Instead, set them off with commas.
Quotation marks
Punctuation, such as periods and commas, always go within quotation marks. For example:
“Justice will be served for the victims of this crime,” the District Attorney said.
There are certain situations where a period may be placed outside the quotation mark, and this usually occurs when the quoted material is just a part of the sentence and not a complete sentence itself. For example:
Applicants must file an affidavit called "Legal Artifact Affidavit".
Time
To ensure clarity and consistency, follow the guidelines below to represent time.
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