What should a language style guide for your company contain?

In previous posts of this series, I discussed why every company should have a style guide and what its structure should be. This month, we are going to dive into the actual content and discuss channels and items that you should or could include.

Reminder: what this blog does not cover

As mentioned before, this post only refers to the contents of a language style guide. It does not include items such as visual guidelines, e. g. for logos, the use of colours, etc., which are also often part of a company style guide. With that sorted, let’s dive straight in!

Callback: step 1, data gathering

Maybe you remember my second post about how to create a linguistic style guide for your company. (If not, you can find it here.) In it, I mention a few steps that are a good guide to follow.

First of all, you need to gather all necessary data for your document: you need to know which channels your company uses, what its vision and personality are, how it would like to be perceived by potential customers and investors and so on.

Once you have all this information available, you can start developing the language conventions that should be used, or you can check what the company has been doing so far and derive rules from it. Condense all good practices into a document and feel free to add some more. It is also a good idea to highlight key things that should be avoided. You could also have a look at what other companies do; this might provide some helpful inspiration.

Channels to cover

In this section, I have collected a few examples for different channels companies use. I am going to have a brief look at them and at their characteristics, but this is by no means an extensive list.

Print media

Printed materials can range from product catalogues to flyers or brochures to Christmas cards sent to clients and investors. They tend to be very formal in tone, and thorough spell and grammar checks are paramount—there is nothing more embarrassing than a typo set in stone in a brochure that was supposed to be handed out to potential business partners. Make sure to highlight this in your style guide. There is also a chance that your company uses a different tone for its Christmas cards and product catalogues, for example. You might therefore need subsections with instructions for different types of print media.

Website

A company’s website is nowadays often the first or certainly one of the first touch points for new clients or business partners. It is where most people first find out who you are and what you do. It therefore makes sense that the language you use here is crucial: choose your tone carefully, as it must match both your company culture and personality as well as your target clients’ expectations. That being said, website copy can be quite informal these days, especially for companies aiming at young target audiences.

Blog

A blog is often a very useful source of information for people who might need the company’s products or services at some point. Marketers often use it as an “organic” sales tool, which attracts business not by active selling and advertising, but by providing help and drawing attention to how your company can do this without being too on the nose about it. If your company runs a blog, make sure to mention in your style guide that it should not be openly salesy.

Social media

There are many social media platforms out there, which are used by different groups of people and have different quirks. One of the most popular in the space industry is Twitter, famous for its post restriction to 280 characters. Generally, the tone on social networks tends to be friendly and informal, but make sure you still remain professional and in keeping with your company’s personality.

Social media chats

Social media platforms offer the possibility to chat with other users or send direct messages. Many companies use this as an opportunity for direct customer interactions, such as support and answering client questions. Customers also appreciate these messaging functions, as many companies reply a lot more quickly there than via email or other channels. Again, set guidelines that ensure that chat interactions are consistent with your company’s tone on other channels.

Email

Email has by now largely replaced postal communications and is therefore more formal than a lot of other media channels that allow direct one-on-one interaction. But it can also be a lot less formal than postal letters! Again, this is dependent on your company’s unique style.

Telephone

Due to their off-the-cuff nature, it is a lot harder to “regulate” phone calls than it is with other channels. Here, it often comes down to the person answering the call, but you can still give them guidelines as to what they should or should not do. (Swearing or being rude to the other person on the line being one very obvious example.)

Items to include

Now that you have a rough overview of a few of the channels that your company might use, let us have a look at some topics that you could include in your style guide.

General tone of voice

This is probably the most overarching section of your style guide, along with company vision and characteristics. Ask yourself: what does your company sound like? Who is their audience? There is of course a lot of nuances to this for different channels, as we have already discussed above, but make sure to include a general summary as well.

Formatting

Formatting rules help you remain consistent across platforms and documents. After all, it can be very irritating for a reader if the use of numbers and units, quotation marks and other items varies widely between two texts or even within the same document. It takes their attention away from the important information, which is something you want to avoid.

Company-specific terminology

Many companies develop their own vocabulary over the course of the years. This is often due to their unique product offering or to distinguish their brand from others. Company-specific terminology is one of the most important sections of your style guide: it is unique to your company and therefore must be adhered to.

“Forbidden” expressions

Just as important as company-specific vocabulary are “forbidden” expressions—in a way, you might even count them as part of said terminology. An example: some companies I work with do not want any negative language in their text, only positive and uplifting expressions. A negation is a hard no for them, because it distracts from their feel-good brand image. There might also be certain terms that your company does not use because they could be confusing or because you use other expressions instead.

And many more…

Unfortunately, a blog post is too short to cover all items and channels that could and should feature in a language style guide. I do however hope this article gave you a few ideas what to look out for.

Thank you for reading

This concludes my blog post series on style guide creation; I hope it was helpful and provided you with some interesting insights. If there are issues I have not covered here, if you have further questions or if you would like to outsource the creation of a language style guide, please feel free to contact me.