Do you need a Style Guide?

First things first, what on earth is a Style Guide? And secondly, why do I need one? Good question…let me show you through the medium of an annoying paragraph. Read the below:

January 1st is a celebration of New Year (which is in the middle of Winter). Lots of people organize a party, and organise for their friends to come to their house. This year I’m inviting the following:

• The Prime Minister.

• The managing director of John Lewis

• my autistic friend [a man I’ve known since school]

Spot the deliberate mistakes

Okay – where to start? This is a prime example of why you need a Style Guide – anyone spot the deliberate mistakes?

January 1st is the American way of writing the date, but how would you like your date written? 1st of January, 1 January or 1/1/2018? New Year is in upper case, but seasons are written in lower case – winter, rather than Winter. Are you sticking to British English spelling? Then replace your ize with ise (organise, rather than organize).

How would you like your lists to be presented (beyond consistently, of course)? This list has some words starting with upper and some with lower case, a rogue full stop, titles in both upper and lower case, round brackets in the text and square brackets in the list. This brings me on to the final point – please make your style inclusive. Regarding the reference to “an autistic friend”. It’s not good enough to label someone by their disability. “My friend with autism” sounds better – this goes generally when referring to race, disability, sex and so on.

Focus on consistency

So basically a Style Guide is a guide for anyone writing for the same company/business/cause. It outlines a consistent way to write certain terms and clarifies punctuation, spelling and grammar. It is there to help the reader concentrate on what you are writing, and not get distracted and annoyed by split infinitives or inconsistent terms.

How do I write a Style Guide?

Here are the top ten things to think about when writing a Style Guide:

1.      Think about what you are trying to convey to your writer. The guide should give the rules and preferred usage for spelling, punctuation, word choices, commonly used words in your sector and business. It ensures that anything written by anyone in your company is consistent and easy-to-read.

2.      Start by writing an introduction: What is the guide for? Who is the guide for? What is included in the guide?

3.      Write a summary of main points. For example:

·        Use of American spelling (use only when stating American words, such as World Health Organization).

·        Use of emojis (please don’t, unless in social media).

·        Underlining and hyperlinks (if underlining isn’t used to emphasise words, what else could you use? Bold?).

·        Use of exclamation marks (as a general guide, use in moderation!).

·        Inclusive term usage (for example, wheelchair user, rather than wheelchair bound).

4.      A list of preferred terms – how does your company refer to itself? How would you prefer job titles to be referred to – upper or lower case? Would you rather your writer wrote ‘per cent’ or ‘%’?

5.      A list of preferred spellings for industry-specific terms. For example, ‘undergraduate’ or ‘under graduate’?

6.      Punctuation and capitalisation – here you could consider abbreviations, capital letter usage, how do you prefer ‘for example’ to be written? E.g. or eg?

7.      Formatting and layout – think about brackets, bullet points, preferred way to write a list.

8.      Numbers, dates, times and measurements – think about how you’d prefer these to be written. For example, spell out one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine in words; write numbers from 10 upwards as digits.

9.      How about including a list of common spelling mistakes and an aide memoire for common terms? For example, how to write foreign names and words, how to refer to regions and countries, and common spelling errors (whom or who?).

10.   Further things to think about are how you’d like your tone of voice to come across to your reader (direct, friendly, serious?); how you’d like your brand to visually appear; any guidelines on specific channels you use (social media, audio visual, photography).

Check out these useful books

Some useful books to browse on the matter of correct English grammar and punctuation are: 

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss (a very amusing look at grammar and punctuation that will take you right back to your school days).

The Economist Style Guide: 12th Edition by the Economist and Ann Wroe (an addictive read, especially for the native English speaker who has been using terms their whole life that have a completely different meaning to what they thought  - ahem).