Many organizations understand the importance of consistent messaging and brand voice, leading them to adopt style guides. Research indicates that a significant percentage of companies, approximately 67%, utilize their own corporate style guides to maintain consistency. These aren’t just brand style guides focusing on logos, fonts, and colors. Instead, they are comprehensive content style guides, vital tools for ensuring all company content reflects a consistent voice and brand personality across departments and locations.
Style guides provide content guidelines, ranging from basic grammar and punctuation to detailed instructions on terminology, formatting, abbreviations, slang, capitalization, and industry-specific language.
A content style guide is the backbone of your enterprise content strategy. It unites content contributors, standardizes writing style and tone, and keeps them on message, reflecting your brand’s voice.
A well-defined style guide offers clarity to writers, ensuring consistent, professional content creation. It serves as a resource that simplifies the writing process and guarantees that content aligns with the company’s brand, style, and tone of voice. If your company lacks a custom style guide, several widely-recognized editorial style guides are available.
Let’s explore four essential style guides that are the most widely used and considered invaluable references.
The Associated Press Stylebook (AP Stylebook)
Alt: The Associated Press Stylebook cover, a guide for journalists and media professionals on writing style, grammar, and punctuation.
The AP Stylebook is considered the “bible” for journalists. It contains journalistic standards for usage, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Most U.S. newspapers, magazines, and broadcast writers rely on it as their primary style guide. Known for its commitment to clarity, conciseness, and impartiality, the AP style is increasingly adopted by marketing and public relations departments. Its widespread use makes it a versatile and reliable choice.
The Chicago Manual of Style
Alt: The Chicago Manual of Style cover, a comprehensive guide for authors, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers.
Currently in its 17th edition, The Chicago Manual of Style is a favorite among writers, editors, and publishers. Serving as the standard for book publishing in both fiction and nonfiction, it is also commonly used in the arts and humanities for academic papers. This comprehensive guide covers the publishing process, manuscript preparation, proofreading, formatting, citation, style, and usage. A condensed version, Turabian Style, is available for students writing research papers. The Chicago Manual of Style is ideal for professional publishing and has been adopted by many corporations as their preferred writing reference tool.
MLA Handbook
Alt: The MLA Handbook cover, a reference guide for academic writing and research, providing guidelines for citing sources and formatting manuscripts.
The Modern Language Association’s MLA Handbook is primarily used in academia. Regularly updated to address modern challenges, including web publication, it offers a system applicable across all platforms. Used for teaching, the handbook lays out the principles behind citing and documenting sources, providing detailed guidelines for scholarly writing and formatting manuscripts. MLA style is favored by scholars, journal publishers, and academic writers. B2B writers are also adopting it for content creation.
The Elements of Style
Alt: The Elements of Style cover, a classic guide to English usage and composition, emphasizing clarity, conciseness, and effective communication.
The Elements of Style is a valuable writer’s resource and the ultimate concise style guide. Originally written in 1918 and revised later by E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web, it stresses clarity and simplicity in writing. Its rules are direct and straightforward. Authors, journalists, and copywriters value this “Little Book.” It’s ideal for writers aiming to enhance their writing skills or focusing on brevity and conciseness.
Other style guides to consider include the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association and the Diversity Style Guide. The most important thing is consistently applying the chosen style standards across all enterprise content.
Making Your Writing Guidelines Company-Specific
Once you’ve chosen a foundational editorial style guide, personalize it to reflect your organization’s unique brand and connect with your customers.
Your guidelines should outline rules for:
- Accessibility standards: Accessible content builds trust with diverse communities, ensuring your content reaches the widest audience. Prioritize clarity and conciseness in your style guide.
Leveraging Style Guides Effectively
While style guides are essential for content creation, they have limitations. They can be challenging to use, and writers may not always consult them when needed.
Modern technology offers solutions. Software can guide writers to adhere to a chosen style guide (or a custom one). This ensures consistent compliance with style guidelines without manual lookups or extensive editing. Tools like Acrolinx can standardize guidelines for inclusive language, accessibility, and brand tone of voice.
Find out more about how Acrolinx can help you manage and enforce your company’s style guide to increase the quality and accuracy of all your content. Download our latest guide!
