Updated on: 15 September 2020

Skip to main content

Office for National Statistics

  • Home
  • House style
    • Language and spelling
    • Punctuation
    • Numbers
    • Titles and metadata
    • Tone and voice
    • Social media
  • Writing for the web
    • Plain English
    • Structuring content
    • How we read on the web
    • Editing and proofreading
    • User personas
    • Using the analytics dashboard
    • Web accessibility
    • GOV.UK release calendar
  • Presenting data
    • Chart design
    • Chart type
    • Chart titles and text
    • Tables
    • Using colours
    • Diagrams
    • Datasets
  • Bulletins
    • What is a bulletin?
    • Bulletin structure
    • Bulletin titles and summaries
    • Main points and analysis
    • Data and methodology
    • Related links
    • Headline releases
    • Data-only releases
    • Supporting shorter releases
  • Articles
    • What is an article?
    • Article types and structure
    • Article titles and summaries
    • What to include
    • What to avoid
  • Coronavirus
    • Writing about the coronavirus
    • COVID-19 titles and metadata
    • Important dates and events
    • Structuring your content
    • Highlighting quality issues
    • Linking between content
    • Where to publish your content
    • Postponing or cancelling
  • Home
  • House style
  • Titles and metadata
  • Titles

Titles and metadata

How to write clear and concise titles, summaries and metadata that will help improve your content’s search engine optimisation.

Table of contents

  1. Keep it clear and simple
  2. Titles
  3. Summaries
  4. Meta description
  5. Keywords

Print this page

Download as PDF

Titles

Titles are the first thing that a user will see when they find your content or land on the page. Nearly 80% of our users come to the site through a search engine, such as Google. Our titles need to be clear, concise and engaging to encourage people to read more and help them find what they are looking for.

Titles should reflect the words users put into search engines. They should focus on topics that users are interested in rather than survey names, designations or data sources. For example, people are more likely to search for “gender pay gap” than “Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings”, and for “employment” than “labour market”. 

Avoid using words like “provisional”, “final”, “results”, “estimates” or “statistics” where possible as research shows that shorter titles get the most engagement. These can be included in the summary instead if needed.

All titles, headings and subheadings must be written in sentence case.

We can use analytics to help you choose the best title for your content. Email content.design@ons.gov.uk

Bulletin titles

All bulletin titles must include:

  • the name of the release (focusing on the topic)
  • the geographical coverage
  • the date or period the data cover

Bulletin titles should:

  • be fewer than 65 characters including spaces
  • be frontloaded and have the most important information first
  • not include a survey name or statistical designation

Baby names in England and Wales: 2018

More detailed guidance for bulletin titles is available.

Article titles

Article titles should:

  • be a concise description of the subject
  • include the geographic coverage and time period if appropriate
  • be fewer than 65 characters including spaces
  • be frontloaded and have the most important information first
  • not include a survey name or statistical designation

If your article contains Experimental Statistics, please include this in the summary.

Disability pay gaps in the UK: 2018

Coronavirus and the effects on UK productivity measures

More detailed guidance for article titles is available.

Dataset titles

Detailed guidance on writing dataset titles is available.

Related links

  • ONS website
  • ONS pattern library

About Style.ONS

  • Accessibility
  • Cookies
  • What is Style.ONS?
  • Send us feedback
  • Updates

Connect with us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Email alerts
OGL

All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated