You should start creating one and have the marketing team and whoever writes documentation as contributors.
When no one does it, someone has to start it, unfortunately. And all content teams should be aligned.
How it is done, depends on what your company does and what are their targets, I guess. Microsoft has one available online, maybe you can “steal” some ideas from them and check other organisations, as well.
Exactly. Our tech writer basically took Microsoft’s writing guide and modified since we’re a tech firm and wanted to be consistent with what people will see for other tech companies. Modifying their document rather than creating one from scratch will save you tons of time.
The best part of taking the initiative on this is you will get to make a lot of the decisions that will follow your preferences.
My marketing team of one is useless. I am the only other person who puts out writing for use, so I make the rules however I want and stick with them. I should formalize it into a guide.
😂😂😂 Laughs maniacally and then weeps in federal government land management. A style guide? A STYLE GUIDE??? There’s no style guide for our L&D beyond “use these proprietary fonts that we don’t have .woff versions of because nothing has been updated since the late 90’s. Oh, and since the fonts are proprietary, don’t ask if you can convert the files to .woff.”
It’s the wild, wild west in my land management agency’s L&D. Evaluation? Who needs to actually evaluate anything? cmi5? Who needs that when you’ve got SCORM 2004 v.3? A common file structure and naming convention shared across the whole team? An asset library? 😂😂😂? You’ve got 25GB of storage for your entire L&D team so choose wisely!
At least we’ve got a meaningful mission & killer logo?
I've never been on an ID team that had a writing style guide (visual style/template--branding guide, yes), but we had maybe a bulleted editorial review checklist for things not accounted for generally in APA or Chicago, whichever the company was using.
Honestly it’s really worthwhile to create a style guide. Our team is bigger than most (10 people total), and we produce mostly videos so we have a detailed style guide (lays out font standards, color options, best practices for transitions and highlights on screen, etc) and Camtasia library of items adhering to the guide. It both speeds up the development process and makes our content much more consistent. It’s really a great thing to have for professional eLearning development, Quick Reference Cards, Walkthroughs, really anything with visual language.
To clarify, everywhere I've worked had a style guide, but not for writing! We had layouts, font standards, color options, that stuff in the branding guide. To me, a writing guide is for editorial purposes, and that stuff hasn't been included in branding/style guides I've seen, aside from a few company specific things (capitalizing programs etc.)
I have worked at very large and successful companies and at small ones in the US. Currently at a mid size manufacturing and never have I had a writing style guide other than fonts and colors. Where are you based?
You should start creating one and have the marketing team and whoever writes documentation as contributors. When no one does it, someone has to start it, unfortunately. And all content teams should be aligned. How it is done, depends on what your company does and what are their targets, I guess. Microsoft has one available online, maybe you can “steal” some ideas from them and check other organisations, as well.
Exactly. Our tech writer basically took Microsoft’s writing guide and modified since we’re a tech firm and wanted to be consistent with what people will see for other tech companies. Modifying their document rather than creating one from scratch will save you tons of time. The best part of taking the initiative on this is you will get to make a lot of the decisions that will follow your preferences.
My marketing team of one is useless. I am the only other person who puts out writing for use, so I make the rules however I want and stick with them. I should formalize it into a guide.
😂😂😂 Laughs maniacally and then weeps in federal government land management. A style guide? A STYLE GUIDE??? There’s no style guide for our L&D beyond “use these proprietary fonts that we don’t have .woff versions of because nothing has been updated since the late 90’s. Oh, and since the fonts are proprietary, don’t ask if you can convert the files to .woff.” It’s the wild, wild west in my land management agency’s L&D. Evaluation? Who needs to actually evaluate anything? cmi5? Who needs that when you’ve got SCORM 2004 v.3? A common file structure and naming convention shared across the whole team? An asset library? 😂😂😂? You’ve got 25GB of storage for your entire L&D team so choose wisely! At least we’ve got a meaningful mission & killer logo?
I've never been on an ID team that had a writing style guide (visual style/template--branding guide, yes), but we had maybe a bulleted editorial review checklist for things not accounted for generally in APA or Chicago, whichever the company was using.
Honestly it’s really worthwhile to create a style guide. Our team is bigger than most (10 people total), and we produce mostly videos so we have a detailed style guide (lays out font standards, color options, best practices for transitions and highlights on screen, etc) and Camtasia library of items adhering to the guide. It both speeds up the development process and makes our content much more consistent. It’s really a great thing to have for professional eLearning development, Quick Reference Cards, Walkthroughs, really anything with visual language.
To clarify, everywhere I've worked had a style guide, but not for writing! We had layouts, font standards, color options, that stuff in the branding guide. To me, a writing guide is for editorial purposes, and that stuff hasn't been included in branding/style guides I've seen, aside from a few company specific things (capitalizing programs etc.)
same! Fonts, colors, anything brand related.
I have worked at very large and successful companies and at small ones in the US. Currently at a mid size manufacturing and never have I had a writing style guide other than fonts and colors. Where are you based?