Six reasons why you should have a style manual for your blog or website

All large websites have a style manual with information on how the text should written. A style manual contains information on the ‘tone’ of the writing, the general style, and specific points on punctuation.

A lot of people assume that there’s one correct form of grammar or punctuation – usually the one they were taught at school. This isn’t the case. As anyone who has wondered whether to use an Oxford (or Harvard) comma or how to spell email (or e-mail) can testify, the English language is very flexible and many choices that supposed ‘grammarians’ would deem ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’, are, in fact, a matter of personal or stylistic preference.

So, if the English language is so flexible, why do big sites and companies need style manuals to tell people how to write?

1. Consistency. If, for example, you choose to use single rather than double quotation marks for direct references, you need to do this throughout the site. If you don’t, it won’t look like a clear, stylistic choice. It will just look like you don’t know how to use punctuation.

2. Consistency. A lot of choices you make in your style manual will be to reflect your brand’s identity. Whether you you use ‘email’ or ‘e-mail’ can be used to show if you are modern and relaxed or more formal and traditional. These choices will only be effective, though, if they are consistent throughout your site.

3. Consistency. Your style manual doesn’t just apply to your web content. It will also apply to correspondence, presentation materials and anything else you need to write. This is particularly useful for reinforcing your brand when it is different to your actual personality.

4. Future-proofing. Even if your blog or website is small at the moment, you’ll grow as time goes on. Waiting until you have hundreds of pages of content before you create your style manual will mean you need to go back and edit each of those pages one by one for continuity. Writing a style manual before you start will make editing easier and save you a lot of work in the long-run.

5. Collaboration. I was going to write ‘consistency’ again, but I think you get the idea. When collaborating with other people or employing a freelance writer to work on your site, having a style manual will save a lot of questions and ensure (you guessed it) consistency in your site.

6. Branding. This relates to point two but I’d like to expand on it a bit further. Many people like to use an existing style manual like the Chicago or Oxford style manuals. This is fine to help with accuracy but limits you somewhat in using the copy on your site to express your brand. If you want your site written in the style of a newspaper, using a style manual is ideal. If you are running a ‘Web 2.0′ site about third-tribe marketing, though, injecting your own personality into the copy on the site is essential.
Before you write your own style manual, take a look at some others and compare them with the brands they represent. Although style manuals are generally quite complicated-looking documents, it doesn’t take too long to write a basic style guide and you can add to it as you come across new stylistic choices in your writing.

Next week, I’ll show you an easy way to write your own style guide and make sure the copy on your site really reflects your brand.

Image: Lavinia Marin