How to create an editorial style guide for your organisation

An editorial style guide, often called a house style or writing style guide, is a short reference that sets out how your organisation writes. It answers the small questions that otherwise eat up review time: is it organisation or organization, per cent or %, Executive Director or executive director?

Its real value is consistency and trust. When a report says "beneficiaries" on one page and "participants" on the next, readers wonder whether two different groups are meant. Digital.gov gives exactly this warning: switching between synonyms such as "senior citizens" and "the elderly" can make readers think you mean someone different.¹ A style guide settles such choices once, so writers and editors can focus on substance.

Before the spelling rules, describe how you sound. Nielsen Norman Group describes four dimensions of tone of voice: formal or casual, serious or funny, respectful or irreverent, and matter-of-fact or enthusiastic.² Placing your organisation on each scale is a quick way to agree a voice that colleagues can recognise.

Voice should be stable; tone can change. The same research advises keeping brand personality consistent while varying the tone to fit the reader's emotional state and the topic, noting that a financial report and a careers page need different tones.² GOV.UK's guidance is a useful model: it asks for a tone that is serious but not pompous, brisk but not terse, and warns that subjective adjectives can make text sound like spin.³

Include a short section on clarity, since most style questions are really clarity questions. GOV.UK makes plain English mandatory for its content, asks writers to split sentences over 25 words and recommends paragraphs of no more than five sentences.⁴ It also asks for the active voice, because it is more direct and puts the focus on the reader and the action they need to take.⁴

Australia's government Style Manual gives a helpful target: an average of about 15 words per sentence, with 25 as a ceiling, and a list where a long sentence cannot be avoided.⁵ Pick numbers like these and write them down, because "keep it short" means different things to different people. GOV.UK also advises addressing the reader as "you" where possible.³

The heart of most house styles is an alphabetical list of decisions. The GOV.UK A to Z style guide is a good model: each entry is a term with a short rule and, where useful, an example.⁶ Its entries include using "and" rather than "&", writing dates as "2 June" rather than "2nd June", using commas in numbers over 999 and using no full stops in abbreviations.⁶

Your own list will be different, and that is the point. For an organisation in Rwanda it might cover the spelling of district and sector names, how to write Kinyarwanda words and names in English text, which spelling convention you follow, official names of ministries and partners, and how to present currencies and figures.

• Spelling convention and preferred dictionary
• Capitals, including job titles and programme names
• Numbers, dates, times, currencies and percentages
• Acronyms, with the full form of each one you use
• Place names and names of institutions
• Punctuation choices, such as bullet points and the serial comma
• Words to use and words to avoid

For NGOs, UN agencies and public bodies, the most important part of a style guide is often how you describe the people you work with. The Dóchas Guide to Ethical Communications asks organisations to explore the implications of the language and terms they use, and to avoid generalising diverse groups as "they" or "these people".⁷ It also asks for content that avoids stereotyping, sensationalising or discriminating against people.⁷

Translate those principles into concrete entries. Decide whether you say "beneficiaries", "participants" or "community members", and when. Prefer specific descriptions to labels. GOV.UK asks writers to keep third-person text gender neutral wherever possible.³ Record preferred terms for disability, refugees and other groups, and check them with the people concerned where you can.

You do not need a long manual to start. In our own practice, a useful first version fits on a few pages and grows from the real questions writers and reviewers ask. Each section should give a rule and a short example of it in use. A simple style guide template can follow this order:

• Purpose: who the guide is for and what it covers
• Voice and tone: three to five words that describe how you sound, with examples
• Plain language rules: sentence length, active voice, "you" and "we"
• Writing about people: preferred terms and terms to avoid
• A to Z: spellings, capitals, numbers, names and acronyms
• Formats: short notes for reports, press releases, web pages and social posts
• Ownership: who decides and how to suggest a change

A style guide fails when it sits in a folder. Publish it where people write, such as your intranet or shared drive, and make it searchable. Give one person ownership, so there is a clear answer when two editors disagree. Add new entries when a real question comes up, and note the date of each change so people know the guide is current.

Share it with everyone who writes for you, including consultants, designers, translators and partner organisations. A short briefing when someone joins, and a link in every brief you send, will do more for consistency than any amount of correcting after the fact.

• Voice described in a few words, with examples
• Plain language rules with numbers, not just adjectives
• Agreed terms for the people and communities you work with
• An A to Z of spellings, capitals, numbers and names
• Every acronym you use, written out in full
• One named owner who settles questions
• Published where writers can find and search it
• Shared with consultants, designers and translators