Does your company have a Style Guide?

You put a lot of work into what you write, making sure that you’re using the correct spelling, punctuation and capitalization. But did you know that a piece of writing can still look and feel wrong, even when everything is technically spelled right?

Errors of consistency can cause this. The color “grey” can be “gray” too, for instance. But if you spell the same word differently a few times within the same body of work, it’ll look wrong and your readers will notice, even if they do it on just a subconscious level. And that might stop them from reading.

When you want your writing to be extra polished, hire a copyeditor. They catch these types of inconsistencies, and can help you create a style guide for your organization. A style guide contains your group’s preferred rules of language, helping to set the tone of the messages that you broadcast to the world.

I’ve worked for companies who have Flight Attendants, not flight attendants, and for businesses who spell the state of “Hawaiʻi” like the Hawaiians do, and not “Hawaii” like the visitors do, because their message needs to convey more cultural sensitivity. Style guides helped me to do these things quickly and consistently, every time.