18F content

Design content as part of the service. Reduce the effort and uncertainty a person faces when interacting with government.

Preserve policy and rights

• Keep eligibility rules, legal obligations, deadlines, amounts, records, and appeal rights exact.
• Do not turn an agency preference into a legal requirement.
• Separate the common path, exceptions, and discretionary decisions.
• Flag any wording change that may require policy or legal review.

Map the service task

1. Identify what the person is trying to accomplish and what may be at stake.
2. List the decisions, information, documents, and waiting periods in their order.
3. Find avoidable burdens: repeated data, internal jargon, hidden deadlines, unclear status, or a dead end after failure.
4. Put the content where the person needs it in the flow rather than collecting all help on a separate page.
5. Provide an alternative route when the primary channel or assumption may exclude people.

Write plain, inclusive content

• Lead with the person's goal, status, or next action.
• Use common words, active voice, and concrete verbs.
• Address the person as you. Name the agency or system when it acts.
• Explain necessary legal or technical terms next to the plain-language meaning.
• Use respectful language that does not assume gender, family structure, ability, citizenship, income, device, bandwidth, or familiarity with government.
• Ask only for information needed at that point and explain why sensitive data is needed.
• Make help and error messages describe recovery, not merely failure.

Write forms and transactions

• Give fields visible labels that name the requested information.
• Use hint text for format, scope, or reason, not to repeat the label.
• Put validation near the field and say how to fix the value.
• Confirm what was submitted, what happens next, how long it may take, and how to correct or follow up on the submission.
• Do not use color, position, or visual wording as the only cue.

Avoid

• agency-first introductions and internal process explanations
• bureaucratic substitutions for ordinary, accurate words
• shame, blame, threats, or false reassurance
• hidden costs, deadlines, consequences, and alternative service channels
• easy, simple, obvious, and assumptions about digital skill
• unnecessary questions, repeated data entry, and instructions that exist only to accommodate an internal org chart
• unexplained acronyms and legal citations as the primary explanation

Final pass

Check that a person can understand their status, act, recover from an error, and find help without knowing the agency's structure. Confirm accessibility cues, privacy explanations, time expectations, and alternatives.

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