Style sheets in word processorsĭon’t use the word processor’s style sheets to produce “All capitals” or other visual formatting effects for text or headings. Transfer your text to html only after it has been proofread. Write your text in a good word-processing program with spell-checking and search features. Use a master linked style sheet to establish the typography for your whole site. Whenever possible, use semantically meaningful tags like “emphasis” and “strong emphasis” ( and ). These tags add nothing to semantic content. Avoid using purely visual markup like italics or bold ( or tags). Develop at least a simple style sheet that tells everyone on the team when and where to use, , and headings, list styles, and other semantic markup. Avoid excessive or purely visual typographic markupĭevelop a careful heading hierarchy and use it consistently throughout your web site. Underline inline links so that users who cannot distinguish colors will be able to differentiate links from regular text. If you include links in the body of your text, choose custom link colors that harmonize with your text color in order to minimize their distraction. Consider adding a list of parenthetic or reference links to the bottom of the article, where they are freely available but not distracting. Too many links will destroy the homogeneous, even “type color” that characterizes good typesetting, and the links will become a constant distraction to the reader. The most important aspect of text formatting is providing the structural markup that underlies the formatted page. Keep the following in mind when formatting text copy for the web, bearing in mind that web markup is not just about how the text looks on the page.