U.S. Department of Education Style Guide

The purpose of this style guide is to help content providers use the current ED website design correctly. One of the reasons we want a standard look-and-feel for all pages on the site is to make it easier for visitors to use the site; for example, navigation that is same from page to page is easier to use than navigation that changes on every page.

Contents

• File formats
  • Acceptable formats for posting
    • Microsoft Office files
    • PDF specifications
  • Acceptable source formats
• General HTML markup
  • Browser requirements
• Photos and graphics
  • Standard icons
• Templated vs. nontemplated HTML pages
• Templated pages
  • Cascading style sheets and text formatting
  • Navigation
    • Example 1: Multipage document with Next, Previous, TOC links
    • Example 2: Bottom-of-page links
    • Example 3: Breadcrumbs
    • Example 4: Resource box
    • Example 5: What's New box
    • Example 6: Page-internal navigation
  • Link styles
    • Alternate format links
    • Top of page links
    • Disclaimer links
• Nontemplated pages
  • Edlite banner
  • Body text style
  • Edlite stylesheet chart
  • Edlite graphic guidelines
  • Edlite navigation guidelines
  • Modification date
• External pages and sites
• Change log

This document is also available in PDF format: PDF (860K)