HBG Senior Consultant Karla Davis
If you’re a fundraising researcher, chances are good that you’ve written your fair share of research reports. Whether you’re a department of one or a team of several, consistency and attention to detail in your writing helps you create strong products that end-users will naturally trust. This week, HBG Senior Consultant Karla Davis shares helpful tips you can use to create or refresh your organization’s style guide. ~Helen
When many of us hear the term “style guide”, we have flashbacks to writing research papers in college, where many of us encountered multiple guides. Maybe your English papers required the citations formatted in MLA style while your psychology papers required APA. Believe it or not, some of us attended college back in the days when formatting citations wasn’t available in a few easy clicks in MS Word. Some of us had to type citations while our eyes went back and forth between the style guide and our computer screen or the paper in our typewriters. We struggled trying to recall if we needed to underline or italicize book titles and if the journal volume number or the issue number belonged in parentheses.
Those days are in the rearview mirror, and we don’t want to go back.
I understand, but your organization could benefit from using a style guide.
What is a Style Guide?
A style guide also offers execution and grammar guidelines for documents that will be viewed by a wider audience than just the author.
Style guides such as those published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) are typically used to format research papers and citations within the behavioral and social sciences and liberal arts and humanities fields. Other style guides include the Associated Press Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style.
Why Do We Need a Style Guide?
The main benefit of utilizing a style guide is for employees to produce documents that maintain consistency throughout the organization.
Yes, that sounds boring. You’re a creative individual with your own internal style guide. Is anyone really being harmed by your overuse of adverbs, preference for sans serif fonts, or refusal to use the Oxford comma?
Perhaps not, but a style guide doesn’t have to limit your creativity. It can make your job easier by reducing the number of decisions you have to make while creating a report or profile.
Without a style guide, an organization produces documents without a unifying voice or tone. One author may capitalize job titles while another does not. Someone puts periods between the letters of an educational degree while another omits the comma between a last name and a generational suffix. With a style guide, uniformity can be achieved.
The Helen Brown Group has a style guide for our research products. I find it to be a valuable resource and sometimes it’s quicker to peruse that document than to ask one of my colleagues.
Who Should Use a Style Guide?
Each nonprofit organization may have a different answer to this question. Some suggestions are prospect researchers, development writing staff, and those responsible for maintaining the intranet page.
How Do We Get Started?
After recognizing the benefits for using a style guide, your first step may be to assemble a committee, preferably containing representatives from those areas who will be frequent users of the style guide.
The next step is to avoid reinventing the wheel! Determine if your organization already has a style guide. The marketing staff may have a guide that can provide ideas for your development style guide.
If your organization does not have a style guide in use, think about using the Associated Press Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style. These are two of the most popular style guides for users outside of the medical or technical fields. Both guides offer physical books or online subscription options.
Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab is a great resource and contains a Style Guide Overview.
If your organization decides to create its own style guide, the document should include examples for the content within. The document should also not be so lengthy that its intended users avoid it. Also, include a table of contents and/or an index to make using the document easier.
Anything Else to Consider?
Your style guide, whether created or used from an existing resource, may need to consider additional factors:
- Font: Does your organization or team have a default font? Does everyone pick their favorite font or just use the default in MS Word? If you have a default font, is it amenable to those with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia?
- Font size: Yes, everyone can adjust the zoom settings in the document, but should you make them do it?
- Naming convention: In a research profile, should the prospect be referred to with a prefix, their last name, or first name?
- Photos: If your document contains a prospect’s photo, is there a preference for black and white or color? Professional or personal photos? What happens if a photo cannot be located? Do you type the words “Photo Not Found” or include a graphic silhouette where the photo would usually reside?
- Pronouns: Will you include them or not? What is an accepted source for this information? Your CRM? LinkedIn?
Where Should the Style Guide Live?
If the style guide is created, it should be stored in places easily accessible to employees, such as an intranet site or a shared folder. The document should include a header or footer that indicates date of updates.
If you decide to use an existing style guide, determine if a copy of the physical book should be purchased for your unit. If your team is remote, perhaps an online subscription will work best. Employees of higher education institutions may have access to physical or online versions of the guides through their campus libraries.
Making the decision to use a style guide does not have to be a painful experience. Reach out to other colleagues for their suggestions. The prospect development community is always willing to share experiences.
