How to write a style guide

Stacey Dickens, author of North Lincolnshire Council's style guide, talks about how she set about writing it and what she learned from the process.

Summary

I was challenged with creating a new corporate style guide for people who write for, or on behalf of, the council. This saw me completely rewrite and modernise the old, outdated and underused guide and transform it into a brand new, no-nonsense practical reference aid.

Key learnings for other councils

Firstly, decide on a house style. This sounds silly but has anyone ever firmly decided the 'house rules’ at your council?

Nothing had been put on paper at North Lincolnshire Council about our 'take' on when to use capital letters, punctuation, or bold font. Are people invited to a meeting at 14:00 hours or 2 pm? Do you write 'two' or '2'? Having decided this already would have made the process quicker.
 
The second key learning is research. I simply updated our old style guide and included best practice. But there are loads of style guides out there that councils are more than willing to share. So don’t go it alone. Look at what other councils use and if advice in their guides applies to your council, incorporate it.

Background to the council

North Lincolnshire Council employs 7,500 people and for some writing correspondence to local residents, businesses and other groups is part of their job.

Historically, local government has tended to communicate with a degree of arrogance – an almost 'take it or leave it' attitude. The more important we think something is, the bigger the words and sentences we’ll use. But this just baffles and sometimes angers the audience. In a world where reputation and satisfaction matters, it’s hardly good public relations.

Our style guide aimed to address all of this and encourage the use of plain English.

Who was involved?

Stacey Dickens, based in the council’s public relations (PR) section, researched and wrote the style guide. Karina Gill-Seiles, one of the council’s graphic designers, designed the publication.

The problems and how we tackled them

Employees not thinking of the audience

If employees don't consider their audience, they are not thinking about their level of knowledge or interest. And they are probably not communicating in a way that people will understand.

To address this, we made it clear in our style guide that thinking of the audience and then communicating in plain English is not 'dumbing down'. It is writing so that the reader understands what you are saying the first time they read it.

Getting staff on board

People don’t like to be told the way they write could be improved – especially if they’ve been doing their job for years with relatively little criticism.

By involving our chief executive and service directors, we managed to get the message accepted at the top.

We promoted our commitment to plain English through the internal staff newsletter, which is sent to all council employees in their wage slips. We drafted articles for our intranet and our council website, and issued press releases to the media.

We’ve started including the style guide in the corporate induction pack for new employees. And our training department now runs a plain English training course, specifically based on the style guide.

Money

I undertook the production of the style guide – and the job of convincing staff that high standards of plain English are vital – along with the 'day job' to keep costs down.

The only costs incurred were printing costs for the hard copy version, which was about £500.

Outcomes and impact

The style guide has been a very successful publication. It is featured on leading PR websites and in national publications. In its first three months there were more than 700 requests for a hard copy alone. This is despite the guide being available electronically to staff on our website and intranet.

Poor written standards on our website and over-bureaucratic public documents are now a thing of the past. The guide has made a very favourable impression among council officers throughout the council, including both the managerial and political leadership.

The new style guide has driven the benefits and value of plain English deep into the council’s culture. We now hold special workshop sessions. And a copy of the style guide is also given to all new employees when they start work at the council – so from day one, they know about it.

We have also devised an in-house training course called 'Effective Writing'. This is a compulsory course for all employees who write for the council or author web pages and it is based solely on the council style guide.

What could we have done better?

On reflection, the one area where we could improve is reducing the size of the hard copy from A4 to A5. This would mean that the style guide is more user-friendly as a 'dip-in, dip-out' reference aid.

It’s always important that people think about how their style guide will look. It needs to have a good design that inspires people to read it and lets them dip in and out of it. Anyone can do it, but at North Lincolnshire Council, the PR team felt we needed to take the lead in this area and disseminate best practice. The layout and design of the guide is spot on. It’s clear and stylish. But if we were to update this version I’d certainly consider looking into an A5 design to try and ensure the guide was as user-friendly and practical as possible.

Next steps

It’s very important to keep updating a style guide. Our language is constantly evolving and we need to make sure our guide follows this. We need to keep the guide looking its best and ensure that officers continue to value it. And as a result of this we’re always happy to receive feedback and enquiries from people about the style guide.

Further information

Access North Lincolnshire Council's style guide – from their website

See 'Writing for the IDeA', the IDeA's online style guide

More council guides on plain English and other useful links and resources

Contact

Stacey Dickens, Press Officer 
North Lincolnshire Council
telephone: 01724 296364
email stacey.dickens@northlincs.gov.uk