Here are our six top tips for creating a very basic editorial style guide for your organisation:
1. Write a one line description of your organisation and what it does
Hammer out the rough edges, and then put it up on your organisation’s intranet, or on an internal blog, so everyone can refer to it when writing about your organisation.
2. Think about how you would describe your organisation if you had 20 seconds to tell someone who new nothing about charities at all
What needs to go in? What would you leave out?
3. Come up with five words that describe your organisation’s editorial approach
Are you honest, information-based, opinionated, formal, informal, positive, inclusive… even just these words will influence the tone everyone writes in.
4. Make a list of the difficult style issues your organisation frequently encounters, and make a decision about them
Do you work with ‘the homeless’, ‘homeless people’ or ‘on homelessness’. Do you capitalise the first letter of job titles? Are you an agency, a charity, an organisation, or what? Don’t bother trying to decide on everything just concentrate on those issues that most frequently come up.
5. Make “a naughty list” of jargon that should never be used, and frequent spelling mistakes from your organisation
Keep this list up to date on your intranet and invite others to contribute.
6. Pick a newspaper or media style guide to be the default for your organisation
When anyone is writing, they should refer to that style guide for instructions on anything you haven’t already accounted for in your own guide. Here’s a few to get you started:
The Guardian Style Guide
http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide
The BBC News Style Guide
http://www.bbctraining.com/pdfs/newsstyleguide.pdf
The Telegraph Style and Grammar Book
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/1435295/Telegraph-Style-Book-Introduction.html
The Times Style and Usage Guide
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials/style_guide/
