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Content Strategy and Style Guide
Your Money, Your Goals (YMYG) is a set of financial empowerment materials for organizations that help people meet their financial goals by increasing their knowledge, skills, and resources. This wiki was created as a summary amalgamation of Raft's Best Practices and three separate guides:
Utilize these guides for further details on the concepts listed within this wiki. However, if you can’t find an answer in those sources, contact [email protected]. In any instance where the Editorial Guidelines differ from AP Style, adhere to the Editorial Guidelines.
The information we communicate to consumers should closely mirror the Bureau’s values and mission. Content should provide clear, direct, advice regardless of a user's economic background, level of education, or financial situation. To help support that goal, we keep the following principles in mind as we write consumer-facing content to make sure our writing mirrors our mission:
- Show Respect - When writing content, focus less on what people can get from the Bureau and more on what they can do with our assistance.
- Show Empathy - Empathy for people sets the Bureau apart from other institutions. But avoid overfamiliarity.
- Be Authoritative - Make the case that the Bureau is an authoritative source of impartial information.
- Incentivise Action - Make it easy to get started, offer multiple options, and break an action into steps where necessary.
- Empower - Expose consumers to content that might help them once they’ve resolved their issue so that they know where to find it once they’re ready.
The YMYG materials were designed to empower both the people teaching the materials and the people they serve, so there are two audiences to consider when writing the content.
- Social Servants - This includes social services agencies, legal aid, pro bono organizations, and community volunteers. Many of these individuals will be learning about these financial topics for the first time themselves, so it’s important to keep everything simple and clear.
- The General Public - This includes people who are vulnerable or struggling financially. For the benefit of these individuals, we must both positively acknowledge the difficulty of their situation while refraining from offering false hope regarding their financial obstacles.
Address your audience directly as “you” and whenever possible use other first-person pronouns to foster a direct line of communication. Avoid words like "clients" and "Consumers" which creating distance between yourself and your readers. And avoid using “Americans,” as it excludes non-citizens.
We adhere to President Obama's Plain Writing Act of 2010 (PWA), to speaking to people in language they can easily understand. For more detailed information, review the Federal Plain Language Guidelines, or visit PlainLanguage.gov.
- Use clear, concise language
- Write sentences in active voice
- Leave out unnecessary details and words
- Avoid absolute words like “always” or “never” in order to avoid having to define every single use case, exception, or scenario
- When explaining complex ideas, such as regulations, use words like “sometimes,” “generally,” “most,” etc., which helps us explain complex things in more general terms without having to detail every single nuance of it—while keeping the spirit of the complex thing
- There will be times when a technical or industry term is unavoidable. Be sure to include a clear explanation of what that term means on the first mention.
- Active voice
- Dates and time
- Capitalization
- Numbers and numerals
- Pronouns
- Punctuation
- Typographical emphasis
- YMYG glossary
Use the active voice when possible. Active voice is often clearer and easier to understand than the passive voice because it helps the reader easily identify the subject in each sentence.
In a sentence written in the active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the action. In a sentence written in the passive voice, the subject receives the action.
When using a date range within the same month, divide the two dates with an en dash (–) without spaces on either side.
When using a date range (with or without dates included) that spans different months, separate them with the word “to.” Be sure to include a comma after the first year, if included in the date range.
- Always spell out days of the week, unless it’s necessary to shorten them to fit into a table or character count is a consideration (like in social media)
- Use “through” to indicate a range
- If combining a day range with a time range, put the day range first and separate them by a comma
Always capitalize the names of months. When there are months with specific dates, spell out the name of the month, unless it is one of the following, which are abbreviated:
- Jan.
- Feb.
- Aug.
- Sept.
- Oct.
- Nov.
- Dec.
When a year is included in the date, include a comma between the date and year. In sentences, also include a comma after the year.
When months are listed without specific dates the month should be spelled out (no abbreviation, even if there is a year). When a year is included, there is no comma between the month and year.
In tabular data, use three-letter abbreviations without a period for all months.
- Jan
- Feb
- Mar
- Apr
- May
- Jun
- Jul
- Aug
- Sep
- Oct
- Nov
- Dec
- Use lowercase a.m. and p.m., with periods
- Use an en dash with no spaces between time ranges
- Include a space between the time (number) and the a.m. or p.m.
- For time ranges that go from a.m. to p.m. use "to" rather than a dash
- If it’s an exact hour, do not include “:00″
- If a time range is entirely in the morning or evening, use a.m. or p.m. only once at second mention
- If it goes from the morning into the evening (or vice versa), use both a.m. and p.m.
- Abbreviate the time zone when it appears with a specific time. To simplify time zones and Daylight Saving Time, use ET, CT, MT, or PT to indicate Eastern time, Central time, etc.
- Do not place a “12” in front of noon or midnight
Only capitalize the first letter of the first work in a sentence and every proper noun. Utilize APA sentence case for the following:
- Headings
- Subheadings
- Calls to action (a link or button)
- Related links in sidebars
- Title of blogs
- Title of webpages
Capitalize the first word in the title and all words of three or more letters. Do not capitalize conjunctions (words like and, or, nor, and but), articles (words like a, an, and the), and prepositions (words like as, at, by, for, in, of, on, per, and to) unless they are the first word in the title. Utilize APA Tile case for the following:
- Primary navigation
- Megamenu navigation
- Secondary navigation
There are different rules of capitalization when referring to a person’s title. Formal titles, like that of “Vice President” or “Director,” should be capitalized when used directly before an individual’s name. Salutations like “Mr.”, “Dr.”, and “Ms.” should also be capitalized when used before a name. Occupational titles, like “banker” or “examiner,” are never capitalized.
The only titles that should be abbreviated are: Dr., Gov., Lt. Gov., Rep., Sen. and certain military ranks. U.S. does not need to be included before titles of Secretary of the Treasury or other government officials.
Do not capitalize a qualifier such as: former, deposed, designate, or acting.
Spell out a numeral at the beginning of a sentence. Spell out whole numbers below 10, use figures for 10 and above. Use figures when used with percent or with decimals–5 percent, 1.5 seconds. For ordinal numbers, spell out first through ninth and use figures for 10th and above. Spell out numbers when used in titles and headings.
When the order of information presented is important, a numbered list should be used. This could include chronological items, things presented in the order or importance, or a finite list of a counted number of items (“three things to know,” “four new regulations,” “10 ways to save for retirement”). Instead of a bullet point, these lists should use numbers.
In general, refer to the Bureau as “we,” instead of the third person “Bureau” or “the Bureau.” If a more formal tone is necessary, or the reader is first seeing the content without additional context, use “the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” on first reference, with our full name followed by the acronym or “the Bureau” on subsequent references.
Use gender-neutral singular pronouns ("they," "them," "themself") when the gender of the person is unknown or irrelevant (in most of our content, gender would be irrelevant). First, try to rewrite the sentence by restructuring it, making it plural, or using “you.” However, in almost all situations you should avoid creating an arbitrary gender or listing multiple genders (“he/she” or “him/her”).
Punctuation rules are further expounded upon in the CFPB's Bureau Editorial Guidelines.
Use serial commas (also known as Oxford or Harvard commas).
The first word after a colon isn’t capitalized unless it’s a proper noun or the start of a complete sentence. There should be a single space after the colon.
Use the Dash when connecting two thoughts or sentences together as well as referencing a time or date range. Use an em dash ( — ), not en dash ( – ) without a space on either side.
Exclamation points should be used very sparingly. To a reader, they can come across as disingenuous, condescending, or out of place, since they convey excitement over an event that we have no context for.
Use hyphens to join two or more words into a compound word that represents a single idea. When two or more words that express a single concept come before a noun, use hyphens to link the words that modify the noun. For example, “long-term goals,” “small-business owner,” “part-time job”, “well-known rule”.
With the exception of introducing an abbreviation, avoid using parentheses because they are jarring to the reader. Place a period outside closing parenthesis if the material inside is not a sentence. Do not use to denote political affiliation.
Use one space after a period or any other punctuation that concludes a sentence.
No quotes are necessary when describing an acronym. For example: annual percentage rate (APR). Use quotes sparingly when referring to unfamiliar terms. Quotations should not be italicized.
The period and the comma always go within the quotation marks.
The dash, the semicolon, the question mark, and the exclamation point go within the quotation marks when they apply to the quoted matter only. They go outside when they apply to the whole sentence.
We use the semicolon to bond two thoughts together, either by combining or contrasting them. Use the semicolon only when connecting two independent clauses, meaning that the two parts could stand alone as complete sentences.
Use bolding for emphasis. Bold phrases so the user can scan for important information. The phrase should make sense when read on its own. Single words or topics shouldn’t be the only item bolded. Keep bolding to a minimum, with no more than one bolded thing per paragraph.
NEVER use italics. Accessibility guidelines advise against using it because it’s harder to read (especially for those with reading disorders like dyslexia).
Additional terms specific to this tool can be found in the Glossary at the end of CFPB's Bureau Editorial Guidelines.
- Auto loan or auto title loan: never car loan
- Car: can use it to refer to a vehicle, but never an auto loan
- Con: position as “risk” rather than negative “con”
- Credit reporting companies: preferred terminology over CRAs, credit reporting agencies, or credit bureaus
- Debt trap: do not use
- Federal: never capitalize.
- Justice-involved: with a hyphen
- Peer-to-peer transfer service: preferred terminology for services like PayPal or Venmo
- Pro: position as “benefit” rather than positive “pro”
- Saving: used as a verb “Begin saving now for retirement.”
- Savings: used as a noun “Meet your savings goals.”