Slug Style Sheet
The rules on one page, so a site's URLs stay consistent when more than one person is writing them.
BFCBrilliance · bfcbrilliance.com/tools/slug-generator
The rules
- Case
- lowercase, always
- Separator
- HYPHEN — never underscore
- Length
- shorter than the title; under ~60 characters
- Small words
- drop a, the, of, for, to, and
- Punctuation
- removed entirely
- Accents
- FOLDED (é→e) — but non-Latin scripts are DROPPED
- Dates
- leave the year out unless the page is about it
- Stop words
- fine to drop; meaning survives
- ⚠ Why lowercase
- /About-Us and /about-us are DIFFERENT pages
- ⚠ Why hyphens
- underscores read as word JOINERS
- ⚠ Changing a live slug
- needs a PERMANENT REDIRECT, same day
Plan your URLs before you write them
| Title | Slug | Chars | Live? | Redirect from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Before publishing a URL
- Lowercase throughout
- Hyphens only
- Shortened — small words dropped
- No year unless the page is genuinely about that year
- Accented or non-Latin characters checked by eye
- Reads sensibly on its own, out of context
- Not a near-duplicate of an existing slug
- If replacing an old URL: permanent redirect set up FIRST
A slug is not a title
Its job is to identify the page and read well in a link, a search result and a shared message. Forty extra characters of title do that no better and look worse everywhere they appear. Drop the small words and stop.
Never change a live slug without a redirect
The slug is the address. Changing it breaks every link, bookmark and citation, and search engines treat the new URL as a brand-new page with no history. Set the permanent redirect up at the same moment — and if the slug is merely imperfect rather than wrong, leave it.