Docustyle

Docustyle is a documentation style guide designed to standardize the writing, structure, and presentation of technical documentation across products and teams. It outlines rules for language, tone, markup, and metadata to improve readability, accuracy, and maintainability.

Core principles include clarity, conciseness, and consistency; audience-focused language; precise terminology; active voice; modular document structure; accessible formatting; markup conventions for code and examples; localization readiness; and content reuse through templates and snippets.

The scope covers sections and headings, terminology glossaries, code blocks with proper formatting, and guidelines for figures and tables; markup rules for commonly used formats such as Markdown, reStructuredText, or HTML; cross-references and navigation aids; metadata fields like version, authors, and status; localization considerations; review and approval workflows; and content lifecycle management, including deprecation.

Implementation and tools: docustyle is published as a living document or website and often accompanied by templates, checklists, style sheets, and linting rules. It is designed to integrate with content pipelines and continuous integration workflows, supporting content repositories, component reuse, and consistent publishing.

History and usage: docustyle has been adopted by many software and hardware documentation teams and is used by open-source projects to ensure consistent voice across manuals, API references, and tutorials. Variants may exist by domain but share core rules and structure.

See also: related style guides such as Microsoft Writing Style Guide, The Chicago Manual of Style, API documentation style guides; topics like technical writing, documentation automation, and accessibility.