Style Guide

A style guide is a comprehensive set of standards that keeps your content uniform across all platforms and channels. It typically includes guidelines on tone of voice, grammar, punctuation, structure, and formatting conventions. Think of it as a blueprint that ensures whether your team writes one article or one hundred, they all sound like they come from the same brand.

In the AI era, style guides have become even more valuable. They help AI tools generate content that matches your brand's personality and standards, rather than producing generic text.  A well-crafted style guide includes key components like terminology definitions, content structure rules, formatting guidelines, and accessibility standards—all working together to maintain consistency.

Understanding and using a style guide ensures your AI-generated content stays on-brand, professional, and consistent across all touchpoints.  It reduces editing time, prevents miscommunication, and builds trust with your audience by maintaining a recognizable voice. Without one, AI content can sound generic or misaligned with your brand values, confusing your customers and diluting your message.

When using AI to create content, feed your style guide into the AI tool before generating text. The AI uses these guidelines to produce content that already matches your brand voice, reducing the need for extensive editing afterward.  You can also use AI to check existing content against your style guide, getting instant feedback on what needs adjustment rather than waiting for manual review.

For teams without an existing style guide, AI can analyze your current content and generate a draft style guide based on patterns it finds. This gives you a starting point that your team can refine. The key is treating your style guide as a living document—update it regularly as your brand evolves and as you learn what works best with your audience.

In Promptitude we made things easier : our Snippets Library is a set of reusable text blocks—like style guides, audience profiles, glossaries, and brand guidelines—that you can drop into prompts or chats to save time and keep content consistent. The library already includes the Microsoft Writing Style Guide and Smart Brevity. You can also create your own style guide or any other custom snippet in Promptitude’s settings for easy reuse.

Before style guide: An AI generates: "Promptitude is an innovative, cutting-edge, revolutionary platform that leverages synergistic AI capabilities to maximize your content optimization potential."

After applying style guide (friendly, clear, action-focused tone): "Promptitude helps you create better content faster. Our AI tools work with your brand voice to keep your messaging consistent and authentic."

Style guide rules applied:

• Avoid marketing jargon and exaggeration
• Use simple, direct language
• Focus on what users can do, not abstract benefits
• Keep sentences short and scannable
• Match the brand's conversational, approachable tone

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