Style Guides: Consistent Quality and a Coherent Image

It can confuse readers to see inconsistent styles across one organization’s documents. Editorial style guides can solve that problem. They’re collections of rules for all employees to follow – ensuring a standard quality for all the writing an organization sends out

Typos Can Distract Your Readers

Inconsistent or sloppy writing can distract your readers. Distracted readers may find something else to pay attention to. Here’s some inconsistent formatting in a list of today’s most popular articles on the New Yorker website: Either these underlined letters should be lowercased, or the circled letters should be capitalized

Free PDF! Twitter: A Write It Well Guide

Twitter: A Write It Well Guide is an interactive, three-page PDF with tips businesspeople can use to maintain a professional tone on Twitter. You’ll find suggestions for framing a 140-character Twitter post and for brainstorming several kinds of business tweets. We also recommend several excellent online sources about Twitter, with the citations linked directly to the Web

Typos That Damage Your Credibility

It’s dangerous to rely on a computer to catch all your spelling mistakes. Check out this typo in a recent newspaper headline: Photo by Flickr user ConanTheLibrarian Of course, “sirs” should be “stirs.” Gentlemen is also the usual plural of sir, but the spelling “sirs” slips through most spell-checkers

Twitter: Tips for Concise and Professional-Sounding Tweets

Twitter is a forum for individuals and companies to share short Web messages with a public audience. (See this page for a rundown of the site and its terminology, and this page for an overview of business tweeting.) The 140-character limit for Twitter posts simplifies some writing challenges, but that limit also creates some risks