Writing & style guidelines

The University's digital communications team is responsible for the style and feeling of the University of North Alabama’s website and therefore is heavily involved in helping others across UNA develop their websites to best represent the University. 

The digital communications team is providing these guidelines to the campus community for the purpose of enhancing the university's presence on the Internet. The guidelines within these pages are intended as a reference for the look and feel, content quality, and technical aspects of all webpages representing the University of North Alabama.  

A great university website leaves a strong, positive first impression with website visitors, including current and future students, their parents, institutional partners, faculty, staff, and the many others seeking information from or about UNA. For many, our website serves as their first introduction to the University of North Alabama. It must communicate in a clear and consistent manner the university's mission, vision, and outstanding characteristics.  

The university’s website is an official publication of UNA. Our print publications utilize a consistent style – a “family” look and feel – and adhere to well-defined Graphic Standards. Similarly, our websites need to use consistent “family” elements and adhere to similar kinds of guidelines for the web. As the primary means by which the world learns about the university, UNA’s website must reflect the university’s excellence in a consistent manner. 

Standard guidelines governing website design and deployment are a necessary aspect of our concerted digital communications strategy. These guidelines are based on industry best practices for web navigation, usability, content writing, and support UNA’s Graphic Standards which protect and project our unique brand. The University of North Alabama homepage, as well as all sub-level pages housed under the root level of the website, will utilize templates provided by the digital communication's team and will be housed inside of the university Content Management System, Cascade Server.  All websites and web pages within the UNA.edu domain must adhere to the university's writing and style guidelines.