Maintaining your language style guide
Image: Red Pony Communications style guide
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been updating Red Pony’s language style guide. Language trends change over time, and with the recent release of a new iteration of the Australian Government Style manual it seems like a good time to review our own language conventions.
Why you should have a language style guide
A style manual outlines the language conventions as they are used by a particular industry or sector, but a style guide tells you how to write for a specific organisation. Well-known style manuals include The Chicago manual of style, the APA’s Publication manual and, in Australia, the Australian Government Style manual (updated in 2020 to be an online resource).
If you think of a dictionary as, at the broadest level, providing spellings and definitions of words, then a style manual is the next level down in terms of specificity – defining conventions for structuring and presenting written content. A style guide is more specific again – it defines the conventions for writing within a particular organisation.
A language style guide specifies how people should write for your organisation – how formal or casual the tone, any preferences for certain terms, whether or not to use Oxford commas … it’s effectively the language equivalent of a design style guide that specifies such things as the colours of the logo and the fonts to use.
What should be in a style guide
The hardest thing about creating a style guide can be knowing where to stop. Only when you start documenting conventions do you realise just how many there could be.
To make life easier, start by agreeing to some primary reference tools, and then document some of the exceptions, preferences, nuances and most commonly encountered instances specific to your organisation.
For example, we use the Macquarie dictionary and the Australian Government Style manual as our primary references. Our language style guide documents conventions specific to our company (for example, a description of the Red Pony ‘voice’), along with some of our more specific internal preferences (such as how we write URLs and phone numbers). We also like to highlight common problems even if they are already covered in the references (for example, avoiding the use of the term ‘ensure’ when this may have legal implications).
To give you an idea of what you might include, here’s the current structure of Red Pony’s language style guide:
overview
tone of voice
basic rules
punctuation
shortened forms
inclusive language
plain language alternatives
style sheet
references.
Start small and build your style guide over time. Your style will also need to adapt as conventions change.
For example, the sixth edition of the Style manual recommended using an unspaced em dash to signify a sudden change in direction within a sentence—like this—but these days most organisations prefer a spaced en dash – like this. The current online version of the Style manual reflects this change.
How to keep it current
The previous iteration of our style guide was a Microsoft Word document. In updating it, we transitioned to a dedicated software platform, Frontify. This allowed us to combine our language guidelines with our visual guidelines (logos, corporate colours, etc.) so everything is now in the one place.
Whether you use a Word document or dedicated technology platform, it’s important to regularly review your style guide to ensure it’s current. Speak with people in your organisation to see how they are using the style guide and ask them where the gaps are. Better still, get them involved in updating it directly (preferably with a gatekeeper to review and approve changes).
Finally, so that everyone in your organisation is familiar with the agreed language conventions, the function, content and location of your style guide should be part of the induction process for new staff.
