SubscribeWhy Have a Website Style Guide?
Language is always in transition. Your website should reflect where your company stands in the evolution of words. For example, something called 
electronic mail or “E-mail” enters the language. Soon it becomes “e-mail”, then “email”. If you use the various forms interchangeably, you’ll look confused.
Where does your company stand regarding these choices?
- Web site – web site – website
- Internet – internet
Even if your company’s website has only 1 or 2 writers or editors, a style guide will help to keep your content consistent. It will be invaluable to contract proofreaders and copywriters who come in without any idea of your company’s position on style and usage.
In addition to settling questions about new words and terms, your website style guide can reflect company policy on:
- Avoiding accusations of sexism: “the customer . . . they” (instead of “he”)
- Treatment of numbers: always use numerals or spell out “one” through “nine”?
- Always use “%” or spell out “percent” in text and use “%” only in charts and tables?
To avoid confusion on basic grammar and usage, include a section on capitalization, abbreviations, terminology peculiar to your industry, and “problem” word choices, such as “its” vs. “it’s”, “that” vs. “which”, and “affect” vs. “effect”. Include any others that vex your writers and editors.
Your website style guide should agree with your corporate style guide, if there is one. Otherwise, it can be based on a published guide.
Someone on your staff should “own” the website style guide and be responsible for keeping it current.
This is great advice, Charles. I recently did some proofreading for a large company and found it incredibly stressful because they had no style guide. Trying to make a document consistent without an external guide to refer to is nigh on impossible.