Table of contents

  1. Release title
  2. Summary
  3. Dates and numbers
  4. Contact details
  5. Email addresses
  6. Telephone numbers

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Release title

A release title should:

  • be under 65 characters including spaces
  • use plain English to describe the statistics in the release
  • include the geographical coverage and time period the statistics are about
  • be in sentence case, apart from any proper nouns
  • use a colon instead of hyphens or dashes, and a comma if you need a second separator

Index of Production, UK: December 2021
Baby names in England and Wales: 2020

A release title should not:

  • be excessively long, or it will cut off in the search results
  • contain jargon or technical language
  • include abbreviations or acronyms unless they are well known, for example, UK, GDP or EU

GDP monthly estimate, UK: December 2021 (39 characters)

Not

Monthly estimate of Gross Domestic Product in the United Kingdom: December 2021 (79 characters)

View more detailed guidance on writing clear titles.

Summary

A summary should:

  • be under 160 characters including spaces
  • use plain English to explain what the release is about
  • be a unique description specific to the release
  • not repeat the title
  • begin with the most important words, so search engines can find the document – not “This release provides…”
  • include statistical designations such as Experimental Statistics
  • include the geography and the time period that the data cover
  • be sentence case and end in a full stop

Remember: the release title and summary should help users to understand immediately if the content is what they are looking for when it appears in search engine results or on the release calendar.

Most popular first names for baby boys and girls in 2020 using birth registration data.

Estimates of employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other employment-related statistics for the UK.

View more detailed guidance on writing effective summaries.

Dates and numbers

Months

Use the format [Month] [Year].

March 2020
December 2019

Quarters

Use months instead of quarters. If there is analytics evidence to show that users search for “Quarter 1”, use this term but always explain which months are included in the quarter in brackets.

Business investment: January to March 2019 provisional
Gross domestic product, preliminary estimate, UK: Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2019

Date spans

Use [date] to [date]. If you are using months in the same year, only include the year after the final month. If the date span is covering dates within the same month, include the dates and only write out the month once.

2009 to 2010
July to September 2021
14 to 28 February 2022

Non-calendar years

Use the type of year the data cover and include “ending [month] [year]”.

financial year ending March 2021
academic year ending July 2018

Ages

Use “aged [age] to [age] years”. For ages under a year, include months or weeks.

aged 6 to 8 weeks
aged 9 to 10 years

Bottom limits for age restrictions should use “aged [age] years and over”, and not a plus sign.

aged 75 years and over

Upper limits for age restrictions should use “aged under [age] years”.

aged under 40 years

Do not include “old” at the end of an age or age-span. For example, you would use “aged 75 years” not “aged 75 years old”. Only use “old” when referring to a group of people in that age group, such as “75-year-olds”.

Contact details

Include the name and business area of the responsible statistician.

Use the group email address and telephone number for the specific statistics team. Avoid generic departmental details.

Kat Pegler, Business Prices, ppi@ons.gov.uk, +44 1633 456 468

Email addresses

Write in lower case with an active link. Do not use other words as part of the link.

ppi@ons.gov.uk

Telephone numbers

Use the plus sign, international dialling code and the area code. Add space between the international dialling code and the rest of the telephone number. Do not include the zero. You can read further guidance in our main telephone numbers section.

+44 20 7273 1234

We are constantly improving based on research and best practice. Any significant changes to our guidance are available on the Updates page.