Developing a Departmental Style Guide Author Jean Hollis

“Developing a Departmental Style Guide” Author: Jean Hollis Weber By: Christina Andrews

What is a style guide? • “A style guide is a reference document that includes rules and suggestions for writing style and document presentation. ” • The content in a style guide is not about grammar choices but is more about decisions made with the possibilities offered. • They are specific standards for a company.

What is the purpose of a style guide? • “To ensure that documents conform to corporate image and policy, including legal requirements” • To inform new writers and editors of certain styles • To improve consistency among documents • “To serve as part of the specifications for the deliverables, when writing for clients outside your company or when outsourcing writing projects”

Topics that Should Not be in a Style Guide • Process Information: Anything that describes how things are done in the company or department. • Design Information: What the document should look like. • Grammar and Writing Tutorials: punctuation, spelling and grammar should not be a focus. • Rationale for decision: Important points are key, why decisions were made are not important. They may be included at the end however.

What topics should be in a style guide? • Language requirements • Systems of measurement (metric, American etc). • Which template to use… • What document elements should be included (page numbers, title, glossary) • Are their legal elements? Copyrights, trademarks? • Punctuation and rules about lists. • Capitalization guidelines for headings, tables, etc. • When to use highlighting, bold, italics.

What topics should be in a style guide cont… • The minimum amount of information that should be included in a document. • Word use: when to abbreviate, words that should be avoided. • How to number pages. • There should be a specific audience with proper grammar usage. • What jargon is appropriate? • Guidelines for hyphenation and numbers.

How many? How detailed? • The number of style guides depends on the company. • “Hardcopy and online documents may have some different requirements” therefore more than one style guide is needed. • Style guides can be short and simple, or they can be long depending on the complexity and details the company wants to get into. • A short style guide however is easier to read, and more likely to be read.

Summary • Style guides set a standard for a company and they are helpful in keeping writing consistent. • You can put as much or as little information in them as necessary but they are there to explain, “rules and suggestions for writing style and document presentation. ”