Writing with style: Create a style guide - Fine Point Communications

Last month, a discussion on CASE Communities explored whether schools should use their style guides to promote diverse, equitable and inclusive (DEI) language. Any time the words “style guide” come up, I’m all ears, and I found this topic to be timely and interesting.

What really grabbed me, though, was the presumption that all schools have a style guide. That should be so, but at independent schools it often resides on the list of “nice to have but not essential” to-dos.

That’s a mistake. Every business ought to have a style guide, used often by anyone who communicates externally. When every division and every department speaks as one, identity and authority are enhanced, conveying unity of purpose and professionalism.

At the same time, it’s easy to become demoralized by the Chicago Manual of Style (1,147 pages in the latest edition) or the AP Stylebook (619 pages). “That’s what we need to produce?”

Not exactly.

Start slow

A house guide of only a few pages can be perfectly helpful. Think of creating a complement, not a competitor, to the big guides, one that addresses the unique needs of your school.

If a building has formal and informal names, a house guide provides your chance to establish which is appropriate for school publications. How does your school list times: Is it 11:00 a.m., 11 AM or something else? And where do you stand on that old bugaboo, the serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma)?

A quick brainstorm meeting of your communications team or leadership colleagues will give you a punch list of loose threads to get started: inconsistencies, say, in the weekly newsletter or unsettled questions among your faculty and staff.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Does your school have a preferred dictionary and style manual? If so, you are well ahead of the game.

If you have not, I recommend the Associated Press Stylebook, 57th Edition, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition. The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition, is a fine alternative to AP, and if your school insists on that, fine. Personally, I find CMOS to be more for academic readers than toward general readers, so I lean toward AP.

As you tackle the punch list from your brainstorm session, these books will help you. Treat them as your primary arbiters of style. If they are silent on a question, the answer falls to you. But not entirely to you.

Enlist partners

I’ve read a lot of style guides, and they all have a way of sounding rigid and eternal. Yet language evolves. The style guide that fails to keep up with such changes will soon become irrelevant.

To form and sustain this living document, a stylebook committee can be very handy — gathering, say, an English teacher, an admissions counselor, and a staff assistant to join you in discussing the punch list.

You’ll get broader perspectives, which is really valuable, and you’ll avoid giving the impression that all these decisions come from only you.

Partially done beats completely undone

Some topics may need a lot of input, especially from administrators, and the answers can feel elusive.

For example, take using “they” as a singular pronoun: This usage works quite easily in spoken English, especially once established as a norm. Yet it’s tricky in written English, where a reader may be unclear from context whether the antecedent is singular or plural and where an explanation of the usage rarely comes off as graceful. There are inclusion aspects to consider, too; the issue is not simply grammatical.

The conversation can take a while. That’s okay: The important thing is to keep moving toward a solution, rather than have the conversation stall.

In the meantime, keep updating and circulating the style guide with the entries your committee has resolved.

Final word or just friendly guidance?

The answer depends on your school and your head. At one school, communications can have the responsibility of “enforcing” the style guide, editing submissions to fit the decisions of the group. At another, the style guide may amount to suggestions, rather than rules of the road.

My advice: Raise this question directly with your supervisor, as early as possible. Once the guide is complete and published, you’ll need to understand very clearly what it means and implies.

Visual identity

Some schools go beyond a style guide to create a brand book. This includes information about their logo, colors, and signage — the most important elements of a visual identity — as well as branding language and instructions.

It can be useful to have all these contained in one document, but it becomes a more complicated document to complete, one that may be beyond the ability of a communications department to finish in-house.

Role models

Ready to start building your own style guide? Here are a few samples to inspire you:

Incorporate DEI into your guide

Returning to our original question, I wholeheartedly recommend using the style guide to collect and communicate school decisions about DEI language.

Doing so makes your style guide more comprehensive and, therefore, valuable to your colleagues. That, in turn, may get people in the habit of referring to the guide to solve any question about word choice or usage.

If you’ve formed a stylebook committee, definitely add your DEI leader to the table. There are implications of choosing, for example, to use or forgo gender-based language, and you’ll be very glad for the perspective of this valuable colleague.

The only downside I can see of broadening the role of a style guide is that an entry can be misread (intentionally or not) as the school dictating a point of view to teachers, rather than recommending a way to communicate with parents and others.

The best defense against this is candor: The more you can explain style decisions, the less risk you’ll face of being misunderstood.

This post is adapted from the July 2021 issue of Refill, a newsletter published by Fine Point Communications.