Recommendations Template demo
How a publication reads in this design
This page is a demonstration of the reading template, written by us. It shows where the new pieces go: the recommendation first, sidenotes, a featured chart, images and video, topics, and related work.
The recommendation
Put what government should do at the top of every policy memo, in one sentence, so the reader who stops here still leaves with it.
Why sidenotes
FAS publishes a great deal: more than 5,600 publications on fas.org, from policy memos to the long-running blog.1 Its readers are often checking a source while they read, so notes belong beside the sentence they support, not at the end of the page.
On a wide screen the notes sit in the right-hand margin.2 On a phone they appear just below the paragraph. Authors write them with WordPress's own footnotes block, and older publications with ordinary footnotes keep working.
The evidence
Charts sit in the reading column and can run wider than it. Each carries a plain-language note and its numbers as a table.
Publication types with 20 or more items, from fas.org on 22 October 2026. The blog (4,715 items) is left out so the rest can be read.
Show the data as a table
| Category | Number of publications |
|---|---|
| Policy Memo | 528 |
| Report | 224 |
| Press release | 109 |
| Issue Brief | 38 |
| Article | 27 |
Images and video
An image grid and a video block, both edited by staff, both kept light: images load as you scroll, and the video player loads only when you press play.
In production the player loads only now, from YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode. Until then the page carries a still image and no video code. (This concept platform can't embed players, which is why you see this message.)