It’s well known that consistency is essential for building brand recognition. Brand recognition is proven when a consumer names a brand without being told the name. The road to such recognition is paved with dedication to a well-formed, consistent message.
A style guide may be a thoughtful friend or a rigid tyrant. Grow it too fast, and it will weigh you down or be cast aside. Neglect it, and you’ll lament what it could have done for you; it’s a style guide.
I am not a rule follower. I hate rigidity. But I love every style guide I’ve made. If I appreciate a type of rule, you probably will, too. Style guides save me so much time that I wonder how I managed my work without them.
What Is a Style Guide?
A style guide is a handy reference framework. Whether creating podcasts, fiction, general communications, technical documentation, or any other creative work, style guides support consistency and focus the work on a planned objective.
Style guides can set the tone, voice, and, well, style of your writing. They may be detailed documents, or they may be simple guidelines. The best style guide is the one you create for yourself: informed by your own plans, research, and habits.
The best style guide is the one you create for yourself: informed by your own plans, research, and habits.
There are many decisions to make. Let’s dive in.
Do I Need a Style Guide?
Style guides can provide value for any organization or significant project. I’ve made style guides that only I have ever used. They’ve saved me time, kept me on track, and allowed me to better consider my style choices.
If you are a creator, you probably have at least one style guide in your head. It guides you until you formalize it. A mind-state is nebulous, fickle, and perishable. There’s no reason to make a style guide before you know what you want. It would be an exercise in rule-making for its own sake. It’s better to have created enough that you can study what works.
If you create with others, have complex or repetitive processes, find yourself checking past works to remember how you did the thing, have multiple media channels with the same goals, or clearly understand your goals—these are all reasons to create a style guide.
Follow the decision to have a style guide with the decision for who owns the responsibility and authority of maintaining it. It could belong to an individual, a contractor, or the entire institution.
What Belongs Inside?
Writing a style guide will help you reflect on your decisions, improve them, and fill the gaps. A style guide is a living document. It should be versioned and define why it exists. Who is your audience? What is the purpose of your writing? Is there a mood that you want to set?
A style guide is a living document. It should be versioned and define why it exists.
Once you know your objectives, you can determine how to achieve them. Style guides direct many subtleties—forming a brand as an aggregate. Are you jovial or serious? Do you use jargon or lay terms? Do you need to inject your brand name every five words (please don’t)? Style guides answer these types of questions.
Don’t create rules that won’t help you. Most rules should arise from “I wish we had standardized…”, “I’m not sure how I should…”, “This never has a predictable tone,” or similar thoughts. Your team should decide how strictly to follow the style guide. The right balance may differ per team, project, and institution.
Style guides can build on a stylebook. Many groups of authors, editors, and journalists have collaborated on stylebooks over the years. From basic grammar to complex citations, stylebooks guide the mechanics of your writing. They’re more about the technicalities of how you’ll write than a style guide is. If you’ve done any writing in college (and often before), you’re probably familiar with at least one of these standards. Specifying a stylebook in your style guide can save you from reinventing the wheel.
From basic grammar to complex citations, stylebooks guide the mechanics of your writing.
Popular stylebooks are used in different contexts. For example:
- AP: news/journalism
- APA: social science, research (academic)
- AMA: medical research (academic)
- IEEE: engineering and computer science (academic)
- MLA: humanities (academic)
- The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS): book publishing
Your style guide could also reference a brand book. Brand books are a great way to start with finding your voice. For example, in our Nine Muses brand book, we determined that we are:
- Fun, but not sarcastic or whimsical.
- Poetic, but not verbose or ostentatious.
- Sophisticated, but not snobby or egotistical.
- Concise, but not curt or oversimplified.
- Imaginative, but not fanciful or scatterbrained.
To avoid confusion of terms:
- Stylebook: defines structure, grammar, and other mechanics in text
- Brand book: focuses on identity, visuals, and how you’ll define your brand
- Style guide: defines the general impression and theme you wish to make, and how you’ll do it with optional references to a stylebook or brand book
An effective style guide…
- Provides minimal examples with no more verbosity than needed to make the point
- Provides templates where appropriate
- Has clear versioning (and is updated)
- Has clearly marked sections with a table of contents
- Is organized logically
- Includes relevant related information as references, appendices, and contact information
- Is clear and descriptive yet concise
- Is internally consistent
- Is pleasant to use
- Is informed by your needs, confusion, and struggles
- Encourages considerate, accessible standards
Consistency is dependent on an accessible reference. Even for the improvisers and anarchists, style guides can be a joy to use. I’ve signed contracts without reading them, hoping for the best. That’s a familiar feeling for most of us. The right style guide will never feel that way. If it does, it was created for the wrong reasons and with the wrong content. Create the style guide that you need, rather than the one you saw elsewhere or the one someone told you that you need. Adhere to your style guide as strictly as you see fit. Update your style guide when needs are revealed or change.
Nine Muses is able to create and improve style guides designed for the teams that need them—informed by experience. For examples of our style guides, visit our portfolio.
