It may sound obvious: your organization’s written communications style guide should capture organization-specific rules and styles. That’s it. But taken one step further — making your style guide all about your organization — can quickly get your staff using a more salient, succinct, and effective tool. Here are some principles that can help create a truly organization-focused editing style guide.
Focus on What Matters to Your Organization
While the style guide you provide your junior staff or freelance editor does not need to reinvent the wheel, it does need to clearly state any deviations from industry style. Your style guide should especially call out any language or usage that is unique to your work, created by your organization, or extremely common in your written communications. For example, if you prefer U.S. over United States, if you use closed, not open, em-dashes, or if you commonly refer to a name spelled with an “ó,” make sure to include this information — it is the relevant information that editors, writers, and staff will need in order to be consistent and correct while creating your products.
Supplement with Industry Style Guides
Whether you plan to hire a professional copy editor or proofreader or use your own staff to clean up your website, email campaigns, or funder reports, trust that they know how to look up grammar and industry style on their own — or coach them to do so. The only thing you really need to put in your organization’s style guide about grammar is a reference to your preferred grammar rule book and dictionary. If there is easy web access to these references, provide links as well. Note, if your organization’s guide is more than five to ten pages long, there’s a good chance it’s too long.
Make Your Guide “Client-Facing” Quality
Finally, consider this document to be as important as any documentation that you share with the public. It’s important that this guide model the caliber of accuracy and professional-level communication that you want out of your client-facing communications. Staff using the document will turn to it as an example, and not just a set of rules. At five to ten pages in length, you can afford to keep your style guide crisp and neatly organized, and truly representative of who you are as an organization.
A good house style guide can mean less to manage in pre-production and less to comb through during production. Consider this: if your style guide is designed to help you better showcase your work, maybe the guide itself should do the same.
Focus on What Matters to Your Organization
While the style guide you provide your junior staff or freelance editor does not need to reinvent the wheel, it does need to clearly state any deviations from industry style. Your style guide should especially call out any language or usage that is unique to your work, created by your organization, or extremely common in your written communications. For example, if you prefer U.S. over United States, if you use closed, not open, em-dashes, or if you commonly refer to a name spelled with an “ó,” make sure to include this information — it is the relevant information that editors, writers, and staff will need in order to be consistent and correct while creating your products.
Supplement with Industry Style Guides
Whether you plan to hire a professional copy editor or proofreader or use your own staff to clean up your website, email campaigns, or funder reports, trust that they know how to look up grammar and industry style on their own — or coach them to do so. The only thing you really need to put in your organization’s style guide about grammar is a reference to your preferred grammar rule book and dictionary. If there is easy web access to these references, provide links as well. Note, if your organization’s guide is more than five to ten pages long, there’s a good chance it’s too long.
Make Your Guide “Client-Facing” Quality
Finally, consider this document to be as important as any documentation that you share with the public. It’s important that this guide model the caliber of accuracy and professional-level communication that you want out of your client-facing communications. Staff using the document will turn to it as an example, and not just a set of rules. At five to ten pages in length, you can afford to keep your style guide crisp and neatly organized, and truly representative of who you are as an organization.
A good house style guide can mean less to manage in pre-production and less to comb through during production. Consider this: if your style guide is designed to help you better showcase your work, maybe the guide itself should do the same.