Writing style guide
CLIENT
Department of Employment
PROJECT BRIEF
Develop a writing style guide for the department's new Youth Employment Self- Help website, then review and modify content produced for this website.
The Youth Employment Self-Help website is an initiative of the federal Department of Employment. Its goal is to give young people (age 15 to 25) inspiration and guidance on developing the skills, awareness and confidence they need to engage with employers, their local community and their personal networks to achieve their employment goals.
The website provides advice on a wide range of topics, from identifying possible careers, goal setting, resume writing and interview tips through to dealing with workplace issues and managing career changes.
The department first engaged Red Pony to develop a writing style guide for pages and resources on the Youth Employment Self- Help website.
The style guide established a distinct voice and tone for webpage copy, cheat sheets, fact sheets and workbooks. It also clarified specific aspects of language such as word choice, sentence structure, hyphenation and capitalisation, as well as providing advice on image selection and sizing, and SEO guidelines.
Once the style guide was completed and approved, the Department then engaged Red Pony to edit over 60 draft resources (including cheat sheets, fact sheets and workbooks) consistent with the guidelines that had been established.
Red Pony provided suggested modifications and extensively re-wrote content where appropriate, using a tone and terminology suited to the website's target demographic.
Red Pony also developed Word templates and applied consistent formatting to various additional resources to be delivered as both PDF files and Word documents for users to download and work with offline .
“The style guide established a distinct voice and tone. It also clarified specific aspects of language such as word choice, sentence structure, hyphenation and capitalisation.”