How to Create a Writing Style Guide Built for the Web [Free Guide]

By cwainwright@hubspot.com (Corey Wainwright)

Free Download: How to Create a Style Guide [+ Free Templates]

Businesses pump out content at a staggering rate these days — and as that volume increases, more inconsistencies are bound to creep in. Whether due to lack of clarity about the style in which you’d like to write or disjointed communication across the multitude of content creators in your organization, failure to decide upon and document accepted editorial guidelines is a recipe for inconsistent messaging.

That’s why at some point, most companies accept that they’ll need to develop a writing style guide.

In short: a document that indicates the basic rules of writing we’ll all agree to follow to ensure consistency across all our content — like whether I should’ve capitalized the “a” after the colon in this sentence.

Answer: If you write content for HubSpot, you should not capitalize the “a.”

But wait… if that’s the case, why would I capitalize the “If” in that last parenthetical? Because “If you write content for HubSpot, you should…” is a complete sentence, thus warranting the capital “If.”

These conventions are specified in our writing style guide.

If you found that train of thought terribly banal, you might think writing style guides are the most boring things in the world and have a burning desire to click away right about now. Au contraire, mon frère.

Why Writing Guides Are Important

The existence of a writing style guide is what saves you from finding yourself embroiled in a debate about whether there should be spaces before and after an ellipses, whether you capitalize “for” in a title, or when a number must be written out in full.

If the writing style guide bores you, just imagine how insipid that debate will be. The existence of a style guide means you can simply have the style guide handy as your little writing rulebook without having to sit through debates about blockquotes.

Writing Style Guide Example

If you want to see a writing style guide in action, check out the one created by HubSpot Partner Yokel Local. Their writing style guide (or “editorial style guide” as they call it) was made to keep both their in-house contributors and their freelancers on the same page when writing and editing marketing content for clients.

Source: Yokel Local

You’ll notice that they didn’t go too far in the weeds, either. The whole guide is 15 pages in large, attractive lettering, and anything not explicitly stated in the guide is left up to the AP Stylebook and the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The simplicity is effective, and they clearly had fun designing the document to be cohesive with their brand guidelines.

In an effort to help you get started with your own style guide, this blog post will walk you through the essential elements of a brand writing style guide so you can create one for yourself.