Writing Style Guide 101: How to Create a Content Style Guide

Learn what a writing style guide is, why it is important, and how to create your own for your company’s content.

What Is a Style Guide?

A style guide is a document containing all of the rules and guidelines regarding the creation and use of content for an organization. It is also called a style sheet or style manual.

Why Do You Need a Style Guide?

English is a living, breathing language that is constantly evolving—and always has been. Influenced by Germanic languages, Celtic languages, French, Norse, Latin, and more, modern English took hold in the late 1400s and has been growing and changing ever since. 

This hodgepodge of a language has been hard to wrangle, to say the least:

• It’s why spelling bees were invented—and why they’re typically only common in English-speaking countries. 
• It’s why William Shakespeare, inventor of literally thousands of English words, famously spelled his last name more than 80 different ways. 
• It’s why you can be a “traveler” or a “traveller” standing “in line” or “on line” to buy an “aluminum” or “aluminium” can of “soda” or “pop” on “Presidents Day” or “Presidents’ Day”—and it’s all technically correct. 

So how do you decide which words, phrases, or spelling to use? 

That’s where style guides come into play. Style guides offer consistency. Instead of saying, “This is universally correct,” style guides say, “This is correct for us.”

Which Writing Style Should I Use?

There are many existing style guides to choose from. These more formal guides were created by publishing housing and newsrooms to make it easier to correct errors and inconsistencies. Popular style guides today include:

• The Associated Press Stylebook: More commonly known as AP Style; used for news writing
• The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS): Used for print publishing; one of the oldest style manuals in America
• Modern Language Association (MLA): Most commonly used for academic writing

Instead of reinventing the wheel, we recommend basing your company style guide on one of these formal guides. Avalanche Creative uses AP Style as the basis for our style sheet.

What Is an Internal Style Guide?

An internal style guide, also known as a company style guide or house style guide, establishes grammar and style rules for an organization’s content. 

Company style guides typically consist of two main sections: design and content. They outline how the company communicates their visual brand—logos, colors, typography—as well as how they communicate through the written word.

Content Style Guide

Also known as a writing style guide, a content style guide builds off of a more formal style manual to create a list of rules and guidelines specific to your company’s written content.

Content style guides include the usual information about spelling and grammar, but they also include guidelines about other content considerations, such as:

• Voice: The way in which your company regularly speaks to your audience
• Tone: The way in which your company communicates, depending on content medium and context
• Industry jargon: Consistent definitions for industry terms that may or may not be tailored to the specific context of your organization
• Intended audience: Identifying the different types of readers that may interact with your company’s content
• SEO best practices: Ensuring content is formatted properly so Google will connect your desired audience to your content, services, and products

House Style Guide Template

Interested in creating a content style guide for your company? Download our FREE template here to get started.

Design Style Guide

Also known as a brand style guide, a design style guide outlines a company’s brand identity. It serves as a resource for both internal and external designers.

Design style manuals cover many details regarding their company’s brad, including:

• Logo specifics: Images, colors, typography, spacing
• Logo usage: When and how a logo is used
• Brand colors: Logo colors, accent colors, alternatives
• Typography: Typefaces, font weights, usage
• Image usage: Desired imagery, rules about photography, and more

Brand style guides are not concerned with what a company is saying, but instead with how it is saying it. A good example of a design style guide is Slack’s document on brand guidelines.

How to Write a Style Guide for a Company

1. Choose a Formal Style Manual as a Base

There are too many nuances to spelling and grammar to start your style guide from scratch. Choose an established style manual, like AP Style or CMS, to base your work on.

2. Add In-house Spelling & Grammar Guidelines

It’s only natural that your in-house operation will differ from formal style sheets in certain ways. Make your style guide your own by:

• Adding in what’s missing: Formal style sheets are updated infrequently and may not reflect the ever-changing nature of the English language. For example, many companies had to decide how to refer to COVID-19 (COVID? covid? coronavirus?) before publishing houses got around to releasing their recommendations.
• Changing what doesn’t fit: You can make changes based on your own preferences (as long as they are grammatically sound). For example, at Avalanche, we use AP Style, but we also use the Oxford comma when listing a series to avoid confusion (“I love my parents, Taylor Swift, and Ed Sheeran”), while AP Style does not (“I love my parents, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran”).

3. Describe Company Voice

Having an intention company voice allows you to communicate clearly with your customers and build trust. They learn to recognize the way you write and speak. That familiarity makes it easier for them to trust your expertise, products, services, and recommendations.

Your company voice should reflect your industry. A law firm’s voice should be professional, authoritative, and clear; too much sarcasm, humor, or lightheartedness could damage the brand. On the other hand, a youth-oriented social media platform should be approachable and relevant; stern legalese would feel out of place.

Your style sheet is the perfect place to establish your company voice and offer advice for tone in various pieces of content, such as:

• Newsletters
• Social media posts
• Emails to clients
• Blog posts
• Other website content

4. Address Industry Specifics

Many industries have specific terms or jargon that are unfamiliar to the average reader. Your content style guide is a great place to explain those terms and create standards for how and when those terms should be used.

Explaining concepts specific to your industry is helpful not only for your readers, but also for your writers. Whether you hire a new freelancer, add a full-time employee to your team, or work with an SEO content agency, a content style guide can make it easier to get new faces up to speed on all of the nuances of your industry. 

5. Incorporate SEO Content Writing Standards

A content style sheet helps your team create stronger content, but it’s worthless if no one ever reads what you’ve written. That’s why incorporating SEO content writing standards is a critical part of any company style guide.

By following basic SEO standards, you increase the likelihood that Google will connect searchers to your website for answers and potential products or services. Your content will set you apart as an expert that people can trust.

Make Your Writing SEO-Friendly with These Style Guidelines

• Content headers: Strengthen your content with headers and subheaders that follow SEO best practices.
• Links: Specify when to link to external websites and which websites are high-quality sources worth including in your content. Don’t forget to also set up standards for when and how to link internally to blogs and pages already on your website.
• Word counts: Avoid being penalized for thin content by enforcing healthy word count guidelines.
• Images: Determine the optimal size for images on your website. Consider enforcing standards for alt text so your images are accessible.

Free Style Guide Examples and Templates

Ready to create your company’s writing style sheet? Here are a few free resources to help you get started:

• Download Avalanche’s FREE house style guide template.
• View our writing style guide example.
• Check out examples from other companies.