What’s a website style guide?
According to Wikipedia:
Style guides generally give guidance on language usage. Some style guides consider or focus on elements of graphic design, such as typography and white space. Website style guides often focus on visual or technical aspects. Literary considerations of prose style, such as best usage, common errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling; and suggestions for precision, fairness and the most forceful expression of ideas.
Style guides ensure consistency.
Guidelines may be for specific words, for example:
- “start-up” or “start up”
- “must” or “should”
- “fill up” or “fill in”
Guidelines may also be for hyperlinks, for example:
- Do not use “Click here”
- Always include PDF or Word icon when linking to PDF/Word document
- Hyperlinks to external websites should always open new windows
We have copies of website style guides that we have created for our clients. We’d be happy to share some samples with you in person.