Content Checklist for CERN Websites

Meta data

1. Word counts: note word counts for different content types

   Details

   • Word counts in French are 30% longer
   • Announcements: 200 words (EN) 260 words (FR)
   • News / Official news: 400 words (EN) 520 words (FR)
   • Press release / Opinion / Obituary: 500 words (EN) 650 words (FR)
   • Feature: 1200 words (EN) 1560 words (FR)

2. Captions: 255 characters

   Details

   • Please do not exceed this limit. If you need to describe an image in great detail, include the description in the body of the text with a reference to the image in question
   • Also bear in mind that French texts tend to be longer, so try and avoid English captions that are more than 200 characters in length

3. Straps: do not end with a full stop

4. Listing title: aim for 45 characters including spaces

   Details

   • Listing title does not need to be the same as main title
   • Titles longer than 45 characters including spaces will show only the first 45 characters then … on the homepage

5. Listing strap: 150 characters

   Details

   • Listing strap does not need to be the same as main strap – it can be a teaser, since it is displayed on listings, while the main strap appears in context at the top of the article

6. Use audience(s), topic and tag(s) taxonomy home.cern

   Details

   • Possible audiences are General public, CERN community, Educators, Students, Scientists, Industry, Media and Policy makers
   • Possible topics are Physics, Accelerators, Experiments, Engineering, Computing, Knowledge sharing and At CERN. (Use At CERN sparingly and only if no other topic is relevant)
   • There are many tags available, the easist is to see which tags were used for a similar article in the past. If in doubt, contact the web editor

7. Tag news so it appears elsewhere home.cern

   Details

   • Use CERNimpact for news to appear on the Contribute to society page
   • Use energy for news to appear on the Energy management page
   • Use environment for news to appear on the Environmentally responsible research page
   • Use Higgs boson for news to appear on the Higgs boson page
   • Use Human resources or CHIS on relevant official news to appear on HR and CHIS websites
   • Use international-relations for news to appear on Bring nations together page

8. Provide revision information home.cern

   Details

   • Summarise change or use these suggestions: [Fix typo] • [Correct error] • [Edit meta data] • [Update outdated content] • [Add new content]

Text content

1. Check style and grammar
   Details

   • Use the CERN English and French Style Guides
   • No American spellings unless they are part of formal names.
   • British English spellings except when referring to CERN as “the Organization” -ise not -ize (organise, recognise etc), -re not -er (centre, metre, kilometre etc), -our not -or (behaviour, colour etc)
   • For Italics, EN text should use them sparingly, for emphasis. They can be used for journal names but not for quotes, where “quotation marks” do the job. In FR text, quotes need to be italic because quotes don’t “close” before you see who said the quote, and then “reopen” afterwards. The lack of italics makes it harder to parse the info.
2. Check that all links are valid
   Details

   • For all links to content on home.cern, remove http(s)://home.cern from the URL i.e. change https://home.cern/science/physics/antimatter to /science/physics/antimatter
3. Remove extraneous/incorrect formatting tags in the HTML code
   Details

   • Switch to Basic HTML first, paste in the text (from LibreOffice or Word, e.g.), and then switch back to CERN Full HTML
   • Make sure there are no additional spaces, characters or tags (e.g. <span>) inserted in the text
4. Use   instead of regular spaces where needed a11y
   Details

   • Numbers with units (e.g. 500 kg) or dates (e.g. 22 November) should have   instead of regular spaces. e.g.: 500 kg or 22 November
   • For French text, quotation marks and colons should have   as well: « ,  » and  :
5. Replace dashes for showing range with the words “to” or “and” a11y
   Details

   • Say “6 and 7 June” instead of “6–7 June” or “6 to 9 June” instead of “6–9 June” is better for those with screen readers
6. Use pretty punctuation
   Details

   • Don’t use typewriter quotes, but “pretty” quotes instead: "text" vs “text”
   • The same goes for apostrophes: l'air vs l’air
7. Use correct symbols: minus / dash / hyphen and degrees a11y
   Details

   • A minus (−), an en dash (–) and a hyphen (-) are rendered differently and are read differently by screen readers. Use the appropriate symbol
     • Particularly important when the minus (−) is supposed to be in a superscript: 10⁻³², not 10^-32
     • Separators, when used, should be rendered as en-dashes (–) using –, not hyphens
     • Do not use em dashes (—) in English.
   • Do not use a superscripted 0 (⁰C) or a superscripted o (^oC) when you mean to use the degree symbol (°C): °
8. Acknowledge if the French version is coming later home.cern
   Details

   • If the English is published before the French, this is the recommended text to use for the French page: <p><strong><em>La version française de cet article n’est pas disponible pour le moment. Nous faisons tout notre possible pour la mettre en ligne dans les plus brefs délais. Merci de votre compréhension.</em></strong></p><p><strong>___</strong></p>
9. Use MathJax for LaTeX equations, but only if required
   Details

   • MathJax allows you to display equations and scientific notations in HTML
   • You bookend your LaTex code with dollar signs: $YOUR-LATEX-CODE$. For example, $B_s^0$ will convert to “B-subscript-s-superscript-0”. If you are confused about the exact LaTex code to use, please consult your friendly neighbourhood physicist
   • Please use it when required (and only when required); use unicode as a first option always (see list of unicode characters).
   • However, do not be tempted to replace regular unicode/HTML characters with Latex where unnecessary: $\mu$ will convert to the Greek letter µ with MathJax, but this is already a valid unicode character and should be pasted in as is (or using the HTML code μ when entering text in the HTML editor in Drupal). See, for example, Achintya’s article on the LHCb tetraquark, which uses pure unicode (including arrows and non-breaking spaces).

Multimedia content

1. Check if the image is on CDS first before uploading a local image or a special-category CDS image
   Details

   • Ask those who submit images as part of the article if they are already on CDS
2. Optimise images before uploading (local or CDS) a11y
   Details

   • CDS images: Minimum width of 1440 px at 72 pixels/inch
   • Local images: Maximum width of 1440 px at 72 pixels/inch
   • Reduce the quality by optimising the image using (1) Compres JPEG (2) ImageOptim or (3) Squoosh
   • When uploading to CDS, provide clear descriptions, and assign credit correctly
   • When uploading a local image, please provide correct alt text a11y
   • If the image looks stretched, add height="auto" so that <img src=“….”> becomes <img height="auto" src=“….”>
3. Link credits in captions (for inline images and videos) to CDS / videos.cern.ch
   Details

   • You may need to modify the source of the article to add the link
4. Embed CDS slideshow at end of article
   Details

   • Go to the CDS entry, click on View as Slideshow and then click on Embed record as a slideshow below the images
   • Cross-link back to the CDS entry
5. Check image sizes for listing and main images
   Details

   • Listing images from CDS should be medium (and in some cases small) but never large. It depends on how pixelated the image looks. Some look fine with small, others need medium.
   • Main images should always be large
6. YouTube videos should include nocookie and ?rel=0 in the URL and have subtitles enabled
   Details

   • Change youtube.com/embed/ to youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ to avoid youTube cookies and to be “privacy friendly”
   • If subtitles are available, force them to display by appending &cc_lang_pref=en&cc_load_policy=1 to ?rel=0, where cc_lang_pref should be en or fr depending on the article’s language
7. Add subtitles to videos a11y
   Details

   • Keep subtitles concise, use commas and question marks but avoid full stops.
   • Do not use titles such as Dr, Prof etc.
   • Avoid splitting sentences across subtitles, if possible.
   • Stay as faithful as possible to the audio, but if a speaker uses too many words or incorrect words, paraphrase using grammatically correct subtitles.
   • Subtitle Edit is a useful tool with hints.
8. Videos to no longer mention the editor on web pages
   Details

   • Should only say Video: CERN (in EN) and Video : CERN (in FR).
   • Use the description of the video on https://videos.cern.ch/ and/or on Youtube to credit the people involved.
9. [After publishing] Contact the audiovisual team to ask them to cross-link to article in CDS
   Details

   • This improves content discovery, when combined with slideshow embeds and linking credits

Notes, references and further reading

1. CERN English and French Style Guides
2. Accessibility / a11y:
   1. The A11Y Project
   2. Mozilla web docs on Accessibility
   3. Mozilla web docs on Accessibility in HTML
   4. Writing effective alt text - EN
   5. Writing effective alt text - FR
3. W3C Character Entity Reference Chart