An editorial style guide saves time and money, and helps an organisation’s writers to craft consistent, right-first-time content that gets them deservedly perceived as trustworthy experts in their field.
What’s an editorial style guide?
It’s a document or online resource that provides rules and guidance on how you write about your organisation, writing style, variant spellings, grammar and syntax, capitalisation and punctuation, sector-specific words and phrases, and more. It helps writers to achieve a high level of correctness and consistency.
Here is an example editorial style guide.
Why have an editorial style guide?
Studies1 consistently show that people are less likely to do business with organisations that make spelling or grammar mistakes in their public-facing content and more likely to trust content with a high level of correctness and consistency.
In my years as a copyeditor, I’ve observed the challenges clients face in the content creation process. Time and budget can be expended unnecessarily on avoidable revisions and debates over writing style and usage. The solution: an editorial style guide.
It’s a new specialist service I’m offering – and I’m looking for a small number of pioneer clients to help me test and refine my process and, in return, benefit from an advantageous pilot‑scheme price.
Choose from three options
(1) An internet search brings up a number of studies with various findings. We can’t really know what percentage of people will react in one way or another when they see poor-quality content. But the point is, mistakes and inconsistencies definitely put many people off and exert a negative effect on trust. Whereas you won’t put anyone off by getting it right.
(2) Trial price for early clients while I’m working on refinements to the process. The future price is likely to be considerably higher.