Edit-Work.com: How To Create Your Site's Style Guide

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Create A Web Site Style Guide

The style guide needs to be written, not kept in someone’s head! And it needs to be specific to the corporation or Web publication. Yes, you need to specify a stylebook to use for reference, but just saying you’re going to use the AP or Chicago stylebook isn’t enough. AP and Chicago are not going to have listings for the preferred spelling of your top products or your company’s name!

Here are some guidelines for creating your own style guide:

Determine which stylebook will be used as a basis for the site’s style.
Determine which dictionary you are going to use.
Determine which, if any, Web sites you will use as style references.
List other general stylebooks, dictionaries, and Web sites in the order in which you would consult them if the answer you needed was not in the preferred reference.
List other specific stylebooks, dictionaries, and Web sites along with a notation to indicate which specific audience or discipline they are meant to cover (ie., for food-related terms, you may want to refer to The New Food Lover’s Companion, Second Edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst (Barron’s, 1995).
Now, establish an HTML or word-processor style glossary document that can easily be added to and that will 'live' on a server that’s accessible to everyone who might need to refer to it, including any freelancers.
Start the style glossary by including the styles of all your company names, product names, trademarks, etc., and any necessary terms (or jargon) used in your industry. If these terms are codified already, include that source in your list of recommended stylebooks.
Make it someone’s task to enter into this style glossary every style ruling that gets made along the way during meetings, editing, arguments … you have the idea.
Make sure that your style glossary includes specific style conventions for microcontent. Setting up style conventions for page titles, footer copy, etc., will help maintain consistency on the site.
Whenever copy or content is added to the site, the writer or editor should keep a style sheet to make note of any new usages. Records should be kept of anything, essentially, that has the potential to be wrong or inconsistent within the story or within the site. Most commonly this would be proper names, company names, and the like. Look it up, discuss it, get approval, whatever you need to do — then once the ruling’s been made, put it on the style sheet.
Notations from individual style sheets should be alphabetized and added to the glossary.