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Why Does a Business Need a Stylesheet?
Jun 10, 2020
5 min read
Table of Contents
What is a stylesheet?
A style sheet can be defined as a set of guidelines created to ensure that every written document a company produces is consistent in tone, style, and other language elements.
Here are some types of guidelines you should consider including your company’s stylesheet:
- The default typeface, size, and color for headings and body text
- How front matter (preface, figure list, title page, and so forth) should look
- Spacing
- Any repeated content
Why does a business need a stylesheet?
Take this situation, for example: Two content writers are working on two separate articles. But tiny inconsistencies appear everywhere. This is regarding incongruences between styles, titles, proper nouns, etc. A business needs a style sheet – a set of rules that are used to determine which is the proper choice when there are more than one correct choices.
A style sheet can help to eliminate a lot of these inconsistencies, even if it doesn’t include guidance on how to use terms specific to the text’s context. In every case, they need to have one particular style that they need to adhere to. This is for two reasons: so they don’t have to decide over and over about which choice to make or they don’t undo the work of the copyeditor.
If you write articles, newsletters, web content, brochures, procedures, annual reports—all kinds of business pieces—a style sheet can save you embarrassment and hours of time revisiting style questions. It can even help you keep your content strategy in check, telling you what kind of content will strike the right tone with your customer base.
Beyond that use, if you have new employees, contractors, or interns, a style sheet can help them use the correct terms from the start. For instance, how do you render your company name? Is it like one of these?
How your company name is spelled, capitalized, and formatted is anyone’s guess. And the correct rendering will not appear in a style manual. It has to be on your style sheet.
Take these steps to create and maintain a stylesheet
- Make a list of names, expressions, and punctuation that your organization uses that people render, or might render in different ways.
- Arm yourself with a group of writers and decide which way will become the standard for each item on the list.
- Alphabetize the style sheet to allow people to look for items they need properly.
- Post the style sheet online and invite a wider group of people to make suggestions or corrections.
- Make the style sheet accessible to everyone in the organization, and inform every one of its purpose and importance.
- Continue to remind people about the style sheet and how to access and update it.
A business stylesheet varies according to the kind of business you have and what copy you want to specifically focus on. Make sure that you prioritize that and then go on about making a stylesheet. Make sure that you have sections in the stylesheet, for example, ‘for social media’, ‘for official communication’, ‘for website content’, etc., so that it’s easy and accessible.
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