Do you have a consistent writing style throughout all the content you create? From your website copy to the text on the free pens you hand out, the words you write showcase the personality and values of your brand. A consistent writing style makes you recognizable. On the flip side, if you sound different everywhere you show up, this could be confusing to customers. But how do you make sure that you’re consistent and recognizable everywhere? The answer is to have a content style guide.

What is a content style guide?

A content style guide, or a writing style guide, is a document that outlines your company’s writing style, i.e. how your business looks and sounds in writing. It’s an essential document in any business tool kit as it helps brands stay consistent across all their platforms and content.

A style guide will typically include guidelines about:

• Tone of voice: e.g. does your business sound formal or laid-back? Do you use humour? What kind of humour?
• Language and word choices: e.g. are certain words and phrases used in your industry? Does your brand use swear words or do you prefer to keep it clean?
• Grammar preferences: e.g. to Oxford comma or not
• Spelling preferences: e.g. organisation or organization
• Formatting: e.g. preferred font size, headline styles, capitalization usage, etc.
• Any extra tips to make writing easier (especially useful for external contributors and new team members)

Often, a style guide isn’t just about what to use, but also what to avoid. For example, you may make it a policy not to use exclamation marks too much (or at all). Likewise, swearing may not suit your brand and to be avoided.

Why does your business need a content style guide?

Developing trust with customers is a key ingredient in converting people into paying customers, both difficult tasks in themselves. Consistency is important in conveying authenticity and building brand familiarity, which will build trust. Additionally, clear and consistent content shows that you offer the same consistency in your services.

Every writer has a different writing style, with slightly different perceptions on tone, punctuation, grammar and formatting. This can pose a challenge when time is lost on repeatedly editing pieces to make them all consistent. With a style guide, writers can write to the brand’s style from the get-go.

Having a clearly written style guide will help a business, their staff and freelancers write in the same voice, creating a consistent and recognizable style across all written communications. Additionally, a consistent writing style across all publishing channels improves the customer experience.

A content style guide is not a complete guide to everything

While you want to be as specific as possible in your style guide, it’s not a comprehensive document. It’s best to keep it simple, straightforward, and not too long. After all, you don’t want to bog down your writers with pages and pages of details and grammar rules. Stick to the main points.

Talking of bogging people down, it should be noted that a style guide is a reference point for writers to refer to. It’s not an employee handbook or a lesson on spelling and grammar; it’s also not your entire brand guide, but rather a part of it.

A style guide is also not set in stone. Brands evolve over time, and so should your style guide. Therefore, I like to think of it as a living document: a document that is always changing, evolving and being updated.

Where to start with creating your style guide?

So, you’re ready to start writing your style guide and you’re wondering where to begin.

There are different approaches you can take to creating your style guide. Writing it from scratch is an option. However, when it comes to spelling and grammar, there are many nuances to consider and list. Therefore, you could use an existing style guide, either completely or as a starting point to creating your own.

Starting with an existing guide will help you to decide what points to cover and it’s easier to make tweaks to an existing set of guidelines than trying to cover everything yourself (particularly when it comes to spelling and grammar).

Use the elements that work for your brand, ditch the rest and infuse extra guidelines in line with your brand. For example, you may write in your style guide that you follow AP style rules for grammar, except that you use the Oxford comma.

Examples of Writing Style Guides:

There are lots of style guides out there to choose from; here are a few examples:

• The Guardian and Observer Style Guide (written for Guardian journalists and free to read online)
• New Hart’s Rules, published by Oxford University Press (style guide for writers and editors; used in the publishing industry)
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr and E.B. White (American English writing style guide – a classic reference book for writers and students)
• The Associated Press (AP) Style Book (An American style guide which is a standard in the news industry. For “writers, editors, students and professionals”)
• Chicago Manual of Style (American English style guide for “writers, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers”)

Another place to look for ideas is brand guidelines. Check out your favourite brands to see if they’ve published their style guides online. Some of my favourites include Mailchimp, Microsoft, and Monzo.

Get help

Compiling a writing style guide is no small task. It’s also a task that’s easy to keep putting off, meaning it never gets done. The good news is that some copywriters and editors offer this service.

In summary

• A writing style guide is a document that helps an organisation to maintain a consistent writing style throughout their written communications and is one part of a brand’s overall style guide.
• Consistency goes a long way to helping create trust with customers, and a writing style guide will help you to write consistently across all of your content, building that recognition and trust with your customers.
• People have different writing styles. A writing style guide will offer guidance to help all your employees, writers, and freelancers write consistently. It can also help streamline the editing process as it reduces the need for repetitive edits to make text fit the company’s style.
• Your style guide is a living document that provides a reference point. It is not a comprehensive document set in stone. Businesses evolve, and so too do writing style guides.
• To create your style guide, you don’t have to start from scratch. You can check out style manuals and also what other brands have done. Use them as a starting point to create a style guide in line with your brand’s personality.