Research of House Styles

1. House styles
Azaan Ismail

2. A house style is a standard that all writers should follow. It establishes elements such as the tone of voice you want to take or stylistic
elements such as how to present a heading.
House styles are usually utilized by large corporations such as The Guardian and Observer Style Guide as they regularly use house styles so
that their content is better suited for their audience.
Identity
The content you create has many purposes such as promoting your brand. If you want your brand to be perceived in a certain way, it
follows that your content should be geared towards this goal.
It doesn’t mean that writers must cast aside their own unique tone of voice. Far from it. It simply means that if someone were to read
more than one piece of your content, it would be obvious that each piece had come from the same place.
Your audience is a key factor here. Everything you write should be aimed at your chosen audience, and this will affect many elements of
the writing. Ask yourself questions such as:
What tone of voice is most appropriate for my audience?
In most cases, a blog is your chance to be a little more conversational with your audience. In this instance, an informal style would be
more appropriate. You might suggest writers use elements such as contractions to achieve that conversational style, while you can be a
little more creative with things like headings. The tone you convey in your content should match the way your brand portrays itself in the real
world. If you are the life and soul of the party at networking events, people would be surprised and disappointed to find dry, formal content on
your site.
What is house style

3. While you certainly don’t want to turn your writers into a team of robots, it’s important that there is some order to your content.
Last month, Guardian production editor David Marsh revealed the process behind the Guardian combining its style guide with its sister paper
The Observer a few years ago.
Those of you who are still skeptical about the need for a style guide might be interested to know that the main reason for this is that the
editorial teams felt that muddling the two styles together was resulting in “sloppy” and “confusing” presentation. In other words, they wanted
readers to continue to feel at home, while they also wanted to ensure their papers maintained their authority.
Mr Marsh spoke about the debate both sides had around two key elements – how to write the date and how to present quotations.
The Guardian favoured a month-first date structure, while The Observer had always gone with a day-first method. Meanwhile, The Guardian
favoured the traditional double quotation mark, while The Observer clung onto to their single quotation mark method.
In the end, a compromise was reached and the publications now use The Observer’s date style along with The Guardian’s quote method.
The point here is that some of the country’s most senior journalists spent many meetings locked in a room fighting over these details, because
they believed them to be important. Without a consistent content style, it will be much harder to achieve the identity that you’re after.
Consistency
How much knowledge should I presuppose of the audience?
We’ve talked a lot about the customer journey before. You might decide that you want to target people at a particular point of this journey,
or you might prefer to spread your efforts across a few different sub-audiences – e.g. you might speak to those at the awareness phase
slightly differently than consumers at the interest phase.​
You know your audience better than anyone. Get too technical and you might frighten them away. On the other hand, if you end up being
too simplistic, they might feel insulted or talked down to. It’s up to you to decide where the balance is, but make sure all your writers know
this too.

4. How to create a house style guide
Few businesses have the time to create a style guide as extensive as the Guardian/Observer. We’re certainly not expecting that of anyone
reading this post!
Target the important stuff
What you can do is focus on a few key areas and ensure people know what is expected of them. Focus on the situations that frequently crop
up for your business, such as commonly used acronyms and sources of information that don’t require further explanation to your
readership.
For example, the Guardian/Observer guide entry for Facebook advises (somewhat grumpily, it has to be said): “No need to call it “the social
networking site” every time – we know what it is”. This is also a good illustration of how not to talk down to your readers.
Have a consistent system in place for formatting elements that are likely to appear in most pieces, such as headings, bullet-point lists (full
stop or no full stop?), CTAs and quotations. That’s a solid foundation that you can build on.
Keep evolving
Remember, as gargantuan as the Guardian/Observer guide is, what you see on the site today is neither a first draft nor a final version. Their
style guide is constantly evolving as new issues crop up, many of which are brought to their attention by readers.
For example, David Marsh (again writing in the Guardian’s excellent Mind Your Language column) recently discussed an amendment to style
guide that was made in response to a reader letter. The reader was irritated by the way the paper changed ‘mom’ to ‘mum’ in every
circumstance, regardless of context.
This was even being done with direct quotes in some cases, and led The Guardian to officially amend its style guide to say that ‘mom’ should
remain unchanged if it is appropriate in the context – i.e. if the story/quote is from the USA.
If you notice a situation occurring frequently that is not in keeping with the style you’re after, or is causing inconsistencies between writers,
address it and put measures in place to stop it happening again. You can also invite your writers to come forward if they spot anything they
feel needs to be included in the style guide.