Content style guides

Create consistent content with a content style guide that includes word usage, voice and tone guidelines, and more.

Varies depending on the complexity of your content, how comprehensive you want your guide to be, and how many people will be giving feedback during the process. It can take a few days to many months to create a style guide.

Ensuring your organization delivers consistent content across communication channels, including websites, emails, apps, and social media. Content style guides help employees write with standard, predictable language, which creates an easier, more consistent experience for users. Content style guides can help build brand recognition and also play an important role in establishing a sustainable content strategy for your organization.

A great way to learn what's needed in a style guide is to analyze what content exists now and where you have inconsistencies. If you're focused on your website especially, see content audits and inventories to learn how a site audit might help you.

Identify which communication channels you'd like the style guide to apply to. Some organizations have style guides for their websites, for example, which might be distinct from their social media.

With the channel(s) in mind, identify the components you'd like to include. Elements of a style guide can include:

If you are part of a larger organization, such as a university, be sure to check if they already have a style guide (e.g. University of Arizona style guide). It is often still useful to create your own, as long as your style guides are in alignment.

You'll need a documentation tool for both creating and publishing your style guide. If you're creating the style guide collaboratively, some options are:

For publishing the guidelines once they're in final form, depending on your audience you might need:

If your organization follows the style set forth in a manual such as the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook, you probably also want that on hand as a reference.

Directions vary depending on what components you're including, but below are directions for some potential components.

Strong style guides often begin with a content philosophy statement and/or a set of content principles or goals.

A philosophy statement is often a sentence or two that describes your overall approach to content, for example this simple statement from Google's Material Design System: "Text should be understandable by anyone, anywhere, regardless of their culture or language."

Principles and goals tend to be sets of verbs, adjectives, or imperatives. For example:

The bulk of most style guides are guidelines around word choice, terminology, and usage. This can include sub-sections such as:

If your guide covers multiple channels, you might have sections to talk about elements specific to those channels, such as:

It's also common practice to have an A-Z word list of common terms, their proper spellings, and their usage. You can also include a list of words to avoid.

A distinct voice is a key component to brand identity. To define your voice, consider:

These answers will not only help you figure out who your audience is, but what your audience values in your content. Try exercises with the leadership of your organization (and your audience!) to identify adjectives that best describe you, such as Brand Deck.

The simplest option is to list out a set of adjectives to describe your voice.

Building on this idea, you can describe what you are and what you are not. For example:

You can also describe characteristics of your voice in depth.

Tone is another important consideration, and style guides will often offer guidance around tone or examples of different tone depending on context or channel. You might want to include examples of tone for content that could be exciting vs. upsetting to the reader, such as a job offer vs. a late fee notice.

To bring the guidelines to life, include some good and bad examples.

Comparison charts can be especially informative.

Once you've created your style guide, make sure it is findable and accessible to the people who write content across your organization. Style guides are most useful if they are used widely! Some ideas: