Services with Extra Value
Style guides contain fruitful assistance.
Just as a garden nourishes beyond any given season, style guides offer sustenance, answering questions and embedding reference points for every kind of content.
Whenever you hit an obstacle to content creation — a topic for a future MCL blog — a style guide probably can help you dismantle the block. Depending on the content type, three kinds of style guides are best to browse online or by purchasing a personal copy:
Comprehensive: This type answers most needs. The Chicago Manual of Style, in print since 1906, is a well-known guide; another choice is The Gregg Reference Manual. Those writing books typically refer to CMOS because of its exhaustive coverage. Gregg has been part of corporate communications since its first edition in 1951.
Discipline/Industry: Makers of specialized documents like those in academia, law, medicine and journalism rely on the MLA Handbook, The Bluebook, AMA Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook and others, to guide format and usage.
In-house: Companies and organizations create and maintain customized style guides to align their internal and external communications with their brand identity and mission.
Style guides are important — they deliver results:
Error reduction – Woe to the employee or organization that misled a potential client or donor because of content-related flubs. Minor or major, errors can lead to lost business or worse.
Clarity and readability – Style guides refine content, making documents stand out.
Central reference – Everyone on a team can unify their approach to documents and pinpoint areas for improvement based on what they find in a style guide.
Consistent brand identity – With a style guide, an organization creates coherent, harmonized deliverables to support strategic decision-making.
Styles guides and AI. The rapidly growing presence of artificial intelligence at workplaces spurs the question: Now that AI is ubiquitous, do style guides still matter? Of course! AI products share the need to input information based on style guides. For the foreseeable future, we continue to rely on the three types of style guides as reference sources while we collaborate with artificially intelligent tools.
When you tap the wealth a style guide offers, you increase your confidence in the content you create. The future of your career will depend on these handy, often overlooked helpmates, ready to sustain your efforts.