styleguide

A styleguide is a document or set of documents that specifies the standards for writing, formatting, and design used by an organization or project. It is intended to ensure consistency across all communications, products, and media.

Style guides typically cover language usage, tone, terminology, punctuation, capitalization, and citation conventions for editorial work; and visual aspects such as typography, color, layout, branding, iconography, and accessibility for design work. Many guides also include code style guidelines for software projects, naming conventions, file organization, and localization practices.

There are various types of style guides, including editorial house styles (for newsrooms and publishers), brand and design style guides, and technical or coding style guides. Prominent public examples include the Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press Stylebook, and Google’s Material Design guidelines, though many organizations produce internal guides tailored to their needs.

Development and maintenance involve stakeholders from writing, design, product, and engineering. Guides evolve over time to reflect new technologies, markets, or branding. They are usually distributed as online documents with versioning and update notes. Teams reference them to ensure consistent terminology, UI copy, accessibility, and code structure.

Impact and limitations: A well-implemented guide improves clarity, reduces rework, and strengthens brand identity. It can also be slow to adapt, risk over-prescriptiveness, or reflect biases in linguistic or cultural norms if not reviewed regularly.