Tone/Voice
Throughout all writing, the voice should remain consistent to best reflect the Miller Children’s brand: kind yet confident, reassuring yet direct. Miller Children’s name carries prestige and experience behind it, so the writing voice can be knowledgeable and self-assured—but never cocky or overly clever, which can be distracting to audiences who want their information quickly.
While the writing voice should stay consistent, the tone can slightly shift for different audiences. For example, a patient will be looking for next steps, answers, and even reassurance in tone, whereas a donor will want more forthrightness and facts on how their contributions are making an impactful difference.
Tips for Writing Web Copy
- Write short, concise sentences focusing on nouns and verbs. This will help make your content easy to digest for all audiences.
- Use first-person, active voice to better engage your audience in a more informal, related way. Active voice also results in more direct and actionable copy. So, rather than saying “Online appointments can be booked through MyChart” say “You can book an online appointment through MyChart”.
- Refrain from generalizing where possible. Show examples, statistics and details that better help the user clearly understand what you’re trying to communicate.
- Speak in layman’s terms. In an industry full of jargon it’s important to speak to our audience in a way they can both understand and relate to.
Institute and Center Names
When using an institute or center name for the first time on a page you should use the formal institute name without the hospital name attached (i.e. The Jonathan Jaques Children's Cancer Institute). All subsequent uses don't need to include the formal name and can reference it as just an 'institute' or 'center' (i.e. our institute).
Call-To-Actions
CTAs are an important part of every page of the site. We should always give our audience something actionable to do wherever possible and do so as early on the page as we can. Our site allows for different types of CTAs listed below.
Keep all CTAs concise, specific and actionable.
- Find an OB/GYN instead of View Doctors
- Explore OB Services instead of Learn More
- Call (562) 933-5437 instead of Contact Us
Primary Buttons
Our primary button styling calls the most prominence to a call-to-action. These are represented in marquees, Rich Text Editors (RTEs) and other content segments throughout the site. When possible, always include a primary CTA in the marquee of any page so users have an obvious path forward.
Secondary Links
Secondary CTAs/Links, while less prominent than primary buttons, still show that something is clickable and actionable. These can be found on marquees, RTEs and other content segments throughout the site.
Phone and Email CTAs
When a phone number or email is your CTA be sure to include the appropriate hyperlink to make these clickable for the user. For phone numbers, add "tel:" followed by the phone number without any dashes. For email, add "mailto:" followed by the email address.
- Telephone hyperlink: tel:5629335437
- Email hyperlink: mailto:[email protected]