Style guides

One of the signs of a good website is editorial consistency – that is, the production of content in the same way across all of its parts. Of course, good English is vital to this, but to be truly consistent, an organisation has to create its own house style by making a number of choices, including:

• preferred spellings
• structure of lists
• italic or roman?
• double quotation marks or single?
• upper or lower case?
• display of addresses and phone numbers
• use of numbers
• punctuation.

In addition, each organisation has its own ways of presenting itself to the outside world, not least its own name and straplines. And guidance is often needed on how language should reflect equal opportunities and a multicultural society.

Two-tier style guides

The essential tool for editorial consistency is the style guide.

We create two-tier style guides for our clients. Following investigation of their printed and digital content and discussion with staff about preferred styles, we will produce:

• a one-page précis of the most important and frequently used elements of the house style – to be constantly referred to for maximum efficiency
• a complete list of all the choices made by the organisation about names, spellings, punctuation, layout and so on, plus the areas of grammar that may cause problems, arranged in an easily findable way – to be used as a reference.

Optional extras

• Each element of the style guide to be accompanied by one or more examples, to make them easier to understand
• A printed version of the complete list.

Contact us for a free initial discussion of your needs.