How to set up a house style guide your whole newsroom follows
Consistent style makes a publication look professional. What to put in your style guide and how to make it stick.
A house style guide answers the small questions that otherwise get answered differently by every reporter.
The essentials
- Spelling: British or American, and local names.
- Numbers: when to write them as words, how to write money.
- Dates and times.
- Titles: “President X” or “X, the president”.
- Tone: formal or conversational.
- Words to avoid, and preferred terms.
Making it stick
Keep it short, put it where people write, and fix style in editing with a note rather than silently.
With Byline
On newsroom plans, set the house style once and Byline applies it to every draft your team writes, on the web, in the app and on WhatsApp.