sarawilcox
commented
1 year ago Notes on bold, italics and underlining from June 2023 Style Council meeting
We sometimes get asked about italics and underlining. We currently only deal with bold in the section on formatting and punctuation.
The proposal is to extend our current section on bold to include italics and underlining too.
The bit about using words like "important" is a suggestion from accessibility subject matter experts, as is the explanation at the end about HTML tags.
Bold, italics and underlining
Use bold sparingly. Do not use italics or underlining (except for links, which are underlined by default).
Use bold in technical instructions to tell users which element, such as a text input or button) to select. For example: Select More, then select Messages.
Do not use bold to emphasise text. To emphasise words or phrases, you can:
front-load sentences
use headings
use bullets
use words like "important" in your content
Why we say this [details]
Large areas of bold, italics or underlining can be difficult for some people to read. Too much bold makes it difficult for them to know which parts of your content to pay most attention to.
People may mistake stand-alone bold text for a heading and underlined text for a link.
By default, screen readers do not announce text in these HTML tags differently:
<b>or<strong>for bold
<i>for italics
<em>for emphasisUsers may miss anything you wanted to express by using them.
There were a few questions about this. We currently use bold for top of page summaries on the NHS website. This is deprecated and we’re working on a different approach, using lead (sometimes called lede) text, in our Wagtail CMS.
Another question related to use of bold to highlight the first word in a bullet list. This is not recommended and may indicate that the bullet points are too long. In our minimum viable review cycle, we could remove the bold.
Action: agreed to add highlighted text to style guide, subject to clinical approval.
Also to add an entry to the design system Typography page to say:
Bold, italics and underlining
Do not use italics or underlining (except for links, which are underlined by default). Use bold sparingly.
Find out more on the Formatting and punctuation page in the content style guide.
We don't specify that you shouldn't use italics - in the style guide section on formatting or in the design system typography section.
Consider adding something like the GOV.UK entry:
Italics Do not use italics. Use ‘single quotation marks’ if referring to a document, scheme or initiative.