Style guide
A style guide is a reference document that captures a brand's writing rules, from spelling and capitalization to terminology, tone and formatting across every channel.
Also known as:
Writing style guide, Editorial style guide
What is a style guide?
A style guide is a reference document that captures a brand's writing rules, from spelling and capitalization to terminology, tone and formatting. It gives writers and AI tools a shared answer to every recurring question, such as whether to use the Oxford comma, how to format dates or what to call the product's core features. Style guides range from a one-pager of brand voice rules to a multi-chapter manual, and the right length is whatever keeps the team aligned without slowing them down.
Spelling: US English (color, organize).
Dates: Month DD, YYYY (e.g., Jan 5, 2025).
Product name: Always "Brivvy," never "brivvy" or "BRIVVY."
Oxford comma: Do not use.
Why does a style guide matter?
A style guide is the cheapest way to get multiple writers and AI tools producing consistent content without constant review. Without one, every writer makes their own calls on recurring questions, which creates drift across content surfaces and forces editors to enforce invisible rules. The risk of a bloated style guide is nobody reads it, so the best ones stay short and rule-oriented rather than reading like a reference manual. A style guide works best when it is easy to search and easy to update.
How do you use a style guide?
Start with a one-page style guide covering the decisions that come up most in your writing, such as voice rules, terminology, punctuation choices and date formats.
Grow the guide only when a new recurring disagreement shows up, so it stays a living reference instead of a write-once-forget document.
Connect your style guide to your Brivvy brand voice so every AI tool enforces the rules automatically, without writers having to remember each one.
/