Are you finding that different people write in different styles for your brand? Perhaps there’s no consistent agreement on whether a commonly used term should be hyphenated or not? Or may you have a blend of US and UK English in use, and no set rules to guide usage? If you want strong verbal branding, these details need to be ironed out, and communicated.
The secret to making your B2B copywriting, brand messaging and proofreading and editing consistent, is to come up with a set of rules that everyone follows. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it saves a lot of time and means that everything your brand puts out into the world stands a chance of reinforcing the consistency and personality that good verbal branding delivers.
It only needs to be a couple of pages, but it’s a super-helpful document that doesn’t need to be much work; in fact it actually reduces workload and builds more efficiency into your business.
What’s included in a useful house style document?
It’s different for every business, but yours could include:
- Do you write in US or UK English?
- Rules on things like capitalisation, acronyms, and punctuation conventions (e.g. hyphens, which always cause confusion)
- Are contractions approved? (E.g., ‘you’re’ as opposed to ‘you are’?)
- Guidance on appropriate use of jargon
- Rules on use of industry-specific terminology and conventions
- Titles and subtitles in title case or sentence case? (E.g., ‘What Is House Style?’ vs ‘What is house style?’)?
- Rules on formatting (e.g. bold, italics, underlines) and layout
- Info on fonts, font sizes, bullet points, numbered lists etc.
- Tiny details that make the difference, like do you add full stops to every point in a bulleted list? Do you add a full stop at the end of a heading? What’s your stance on the divisive Oxford comma (in the right context, I love an Oxford comma, for what it’s worth)
- How do you deal with widows and orphans?
- How do you add sources in various contexts? E.g., hyperlinks? In a footnote?
- Guidance on best practice, and approved/unapproved language to use around equality, diversity and inclusion
- Guidance on use of swear words, emojis etc
- A ‘bin’ for unapproved words and clichés you want to sack off
This level of attention to detail might seem like splitting hairs, but it’s all stuff that subconsciously reassures. It doesn’t have to be an epic tome (but it’s worth checking out some that are, like the BBC News Style Guide).
Important things to remember
- It should be ‘owned’ by one person who is responsible for maintaining and updating it.
- It should be reviewed and recirculated every quarter.
- It should be kept in a central place so everybody has access to it.
- It should be given to anyone proofreading or copywriting for your business. They will likely have questions as they get to know your brand, and this can be helpful for developing the document further.
There’s huge value in formalising your brand’s house style as part of your wider verbal branding – it makes life easier for everyone writing for your business. It can be used as an extension of your brand voice guidelines, and incorporated into your overall brand guidelines.
If you’re developing great B2B messaging and positioning, or prioritising high-quality, human-written copywriting for your brand, then nailing your house style is an important piece of the puzzle.
I can help. Get in touch and we’ll talk it through.