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A system to help you write, design, and build digital services on VA.gov

Our content style guide, components, and patterns include guidance, standards, and tools to help teams build a consistent, intuitive, and Veteran-centered experience across VA.gov.

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Content style guide

By practicing language in an intentional way, we can provide content that supports Veterans' needs and improve their experience on our site. See usage guidelines, examples, and more.

Content principles

Our content principles guide the voice and tone of everything we write.

Writing for SEO

See basic SEO tips and best practices for making content findable in searches.

Word list

Use our in-house style for common words on VA.gov, so we can use words and labels consistently.

Foundation

Visual language and styles that convey interactivity, provide structure to content, and impart a sense of space and context.

Visual design styles

Use our color palette, typography, and more to give all sites on the VA.gov platform a consistent look and feel.

Layout & grid

Information about the design grid and how to build page layouts.

Utilities

HTML classes scoped to a single property that can be used to override default properties or style new objects without writing additional CSS.

Components, patterns, and templates

The building blocks and best practices that allow you to spend less time on common UI problems and implementation, and more time solving Veterans’ needs.

Components

Design and code for interface building blocks that can be reused across the VA.gov platform.

Patterns

Components and utilities can be combined to solve recurring user needs. Here, we provide design samples and code for our design patterns.

Templates

Page template examples for specific page types include hubs, emails, and authentication.