Appearing professional is very important to any business and one thing that can help achieve this is consistency in your written documents.

Have your ever received a letter which mixes fonts, italics, and spellings (even if both are correct)? You’ll probably agree that it looks a bit messy.

One document can be correctly spelled and punctuated, but if it doesn’t follow a set of rules then the result is a hotchpotch of style.

To make sure you don’t fall into this trap, why not spend some time creating a style book for your organisation?

A style book is simply a set of rules which you and your colleagues follow whenever a piece of writing is produced, whether that is a letter, writing for the web, brochure or case study.

Decide what your rules are. Do you want to be an organisation or an organization? Both are correct. Do you want to put job titles in capitals or lower case? Do you indent the first paragraph?  Also think about:

• Font
• Point size
• Use of italics
• Speech marks
• Abbreviations
• Acronyms
• Use of bold

The overall effect of sticking to a style book is that your written work looks tidy and consistent. You appear professional and you are delivering the subliminal message “Look at us, we are a team, we work in harmony, we are all on message – we are worth talking to.”

More on how to create a style book in a future blog, but for some immediate advice please get in touch.