Primary Colors

• #015a84
• #008cc8
• #E5EEF2

Secondary Colors

• #85c659
• #daebc1

Accent Colors

• #fb8733

Grays

• #333333
• #555555
• #999999
• #CCCCCC
• #EEEEEE

Editorial

General

CancerCare follows the AP Stylebook

• Use a.m. and p.m.
• lists of three, four or more items should not use a comma before the penultimate item (also known as the serial, or Oxford, comma) unless its absence introduces ambiguity.
• Use – for the en-dash, which is used without spaces to show ranges (e.g. Nov. 12–13) and with spaces to demarcate parenthetical thoughts – thoughts like this one – with typographic exactitude.
• Quotation marks go “outside of links”.
• When possible, use typographically correct quotation marks (“ and ”), not primes (").
• When title-casing in Spanish, the words “en”, “el”, “de”, “los/las” and “a” should be lowercase, but other words like “Para” (for in English) should be uppercase.
• All phone numbers, including CancerCare’s, should be written without the “1-” in front of the area code.
• Omit superscripts from dates: May 1, not May 1^st
• When writing our address, always spell out “Seventh,” and, space permitting, “Avenue”.

CancerCare-Specific

• When writing about print publications, the words “booklets” and “fact sheets” should be lowercase (unless part of a title-cased heading)
• Programs and such happen at our offices, not in our offices. Not that it really matters, but we need to be consistent.

Staff Credentials

• Use the social work specific and education credential and (e.g., MSW, LCSW, OSW-C) for social workers listed on our website staff listing page and other sections (e.g., Ask CancerCare)
• An employee’s actual title (e.g., “Director of Education”) should be capitalized if it proceeds name. Do not capitalize titles after name (e.g., Jane Smith, senior coordinator of special events)

Coding Standards

Front End

• Mark up the organization’s name like so: Cancer<i>Care</i>, or in our Rails environment use <%= cancercare %> or #{cancercare} where appropriate
• Use non-breaking hyphens (Ὕ) with phone numbers. In Rails, use our <%= phone_number() %> helper function! Pass in a hyphenated phone number and it replaces the hyphens with the non-breaking variety. Also has some handy presets (:main, :fax, :ct, etc.) See application_helper.rb for the full list.
• Always link email addresses with the mailto: protocol. In Rails, use our <%= email_link() %> helper function! Pass in an email address and get back a proper link. Also has some handy presets (:main, :copay, :events, etc.). See application_helper.rb for the full list.
• Don’t use target="blank" in links. Let users decide if they want to open a new window or not.

Back End

• Include the protocol when entering/retrieving URLs in/from the database

Tagging Guidelines

1. How to apply tags

   • What is the main focus of the Q&A/resource/CEW/pub?
   • Actual (value added) info/content versus simply mentioned as a resource. If a client is looking for clinical trial info, they probably don’t want to see a publication that only mentions one could pursue clinical trials.

2. Creating tags

   • Think about how client would search and create/use clear tags (e.g., peripheral neuropathy, neuropathy, numbness?).

3. Broad diagnosis categories and specific diagnosis sub-types:

   • For a specific type of cancer (e.g., CLL, always tag the "parent" diagnosis, e.g., leukemia).
   • If a resource is about a general type of cancer (e.g., leukemia), try to find out what specific types might be covered (e.g., ALL, AML, CLL) and tag appropriately.

4. For bereavement

   • Simply tag grief and loss + all cancers.

Miscellaneous Practices

Spanish Resource Titles

• Should appear in Spanish on the En Español page. This page is for Spanish-speakers only.
• Should appear in English on the English-language Spanish page. This page is for English-speakers/bilinguals only.
• Should appear in Spanish (with English translations in parentheses or nearby) everywhere else.

To this end, I've added a helper function, english_title(), which takes an object as an argument an outputs its English title. An optional second argument of "true" will show the English title in parentheses after the native-language title. This should be used instead of resource.title when you want to suppress non-English titles.