Why do we use style guides




















These are usually indicated with a set of rules on the journal's website or in a downloadable PDF — you can look for pages such as "Author Guidelines," "Instructions for Authors," "Submission Guidelines," etc. In some cases, in-house style will be just a few modifications on a more widely-used style guide, like requiring APA 7 th edition but asking authors to list full names for sources cited in-text rather than just the last name.

These are usually indicated in the same way as in-house styles above. The OWL has several resources, and many style guides are available in part or in full on the relevant association's website.

You don't need to read manuals cover-to-cover since most of the material is for reference, but style guides usually also have a great deal of information that will help you write your paper or manuscript. For instance:. The Chicago Manual of Style's entire first section, almost pages, describes in detail the scholarly process undertaken by researchers using Chicago style, including expectations for navigating copyright law as an author and for what elements authors need to include in their manuscripts and how those elements are written.

The MLA Handbook includes a substantial section on how to write a research paper or scholarly work in an MLA field, especially useful for beginning scholars or international scholars writing for an American academic context.

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association includes sections like those mentioned above in addition to guidelines for writing about research with Indigenous populations, rules for nondiscriminatory language, and more. At the very least, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the manual's table of contents, general structure, and any special systems that style guides uses MLA 8's container style is specially designed for research with non-traditional and digital sources, for example.

If you were to leave up the visual representation of your organization open to individual interpretation, chances are you would get a very mixed bag of results. A guide will create cohesion, direction and clarity for all marketing decisions in your organization.

A visual style guide will help the creation and upkeep of your website, look and voice of your social media accounts and much more from blogs to ads. Many companies choose to follow a specific widely known style guide such as Chicago Manual of Style or Associated Press Stylebook whereas other organizations elect to build their own individual set of standards.

The company voice plays back into this notion that we, as consumers, personify brands as if they were real people. Comprehensive style guides define the company image from a visual and editorial perspective to ensure a unified brand.

We recommend implementing both a visual style guide and an editorial style guide to keep branding consistent across all corporate materials.

Consistency creates a cohesive experience that consumers can expect each time they interact with your organization. Over time, this will help build brand recognition and nurture future customers. This saves your organisation time and therefore, money. To chat about developing your corporate style guide, contact us. Keep fighting for the writing.

Seven reasons why you need a good corporate style guide. For a start, a good style guide will cover issues such as: whether your headings should be in title or sentence case the format of footnotes and in-text references the style and punctuation of your bullet lists the correct spelling and usage of technical terms relevant to your industry whether particular acronyms or abbreviated terms need to be spelled out in full when first mentioned for example, NSW, GST, CapEx.

Maybe you don't like unnecessary use of quotation marks? Perhaps you can't understand why grown-ups still don't know the difference between 'it's' and 'its'? You're right. But this is not the place for that. Whatever your bugbear is, you need to put it to one side and focus on the key message.

A good style guide is no more than four pages. Of course, some organizations may need it to be longer. However, outside of publishing, bear in mind that the goal is just to focus on points of style where there is no right answer but where one usage is preferred by the organization. A style guide is not the place to teach your colleagues things that they should already know. A style guide is also not a design guide.

You should have in place templates that automate indentation, typefaces and styles within Word if you do not have these already, email us for a recommendation at info intelligentediting.

Graphics formats, logo presentation and other issues that relate to appearance also belong elsewhere. If there are rules in your company about signing off on documents or procedures for checking and releasing then leave these out.

Equally, instructions on using Word do not belong here. Reminding authors to use a spell check before passing on their document is not consistent with how a style guide will be read and is a sure-fire way to deter people from using it. The best way to make sure that nobody uses your style guide is to write it and then tell everyone else to obey it. The purpose of a style guide is to make sure that multiple authors write in a clear and unified way that reflects the corporate style.

So it's best to bring other authors into the process as soon as possible.



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