How your business is presented in writing can be likened to dressing for an important interview. Dress smartly and you portray an image of professionalism and trust; dress down, however, and confidence in your abilities won’t be as positive.

Most businesses have brand guidelines which help them to ensure their corporate identity is clear and recognisable to the outside world. However, not as many extend this principle to their written word. Developing house rules regarding text will help to ensure any copy produced by your company is consistent, correct and, therefore, professional. A freelance proofreader will absorb your style guide and apply its principles to everything they check for you.

A text style guide needn’t be complicated; the complexity largely depends on what type of copy you produce. A magazine publisher will need to establish some rules about how titles are written, and the use of headers, bold, italic and superscript, for example. If you publish reports or documents of a more technical nature, it’s likely your style guide will need to be more detailed. Then there are the ‘basics’, such as the use of capitals, hyphenation and punctuation of lists and bullets — surprisingly, even here, every company’s preferences are different!

No matter what size your business, if you produce text then it is likely that a style guide will be beneficial to you. If you don’t yet have a style guide then we can develop a personal guide that addresses the needs of your business. Ultimate Proof can build on the basics, in terms of punctuation and spelling, and create a clear and practical guide for your company that can be given to anyone who might produce copy for you. If everyone is ‘singing from the same style sheet’ to start with, you will not only reduce the overall risk of error, but will save time and money on proofreading and amends.