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Do you have a written identity (as well as a corporate identity)? Here is a back issue of Marketing Booster, the email newsletter that Richard Groom writes and sends free every fortnight to subscribers. You can subscribe here or read over 60 back issues using the back issues index page. Warning: I've gone a bit geeky in this article. This isn't about creative marketing or new ways to attract new customers. But I think I'm addressing an important issue all the same: consistency in your use of the written word. If you work for a medium or large organisation, you probably have to comply with a visual identity. Decisions such as how your logo appears, what colours your marketing material uses and so on are probably specified in a style guide. It's important stuff, because you will look shoddy and unprofessional if your visual presentation isn't consistent. But many organisations have not taken the same care about ensuring a consistent identity to the written content of their marketing and other business materials. I have seen web sites with carefully designed page headers, logos and buttons that look great and are consistent on every page. But unfortunately the text itself differs from page to page. The typeface, size, colours, use of emboldening and so on all change as you click on new pages. Pretty soon, these sites lose their professional appearance and end up looking very amateur. Worse still, visitors will find it hard to reach the information they are want if the basic principles of writing web-friendly copy are ignored. The same problem can happen in printed materials too. A range of brochures, leaflets and sales letters can lack consistency and fail to present a coherent image to customers. So where do you start if you want to create a consistent written identity? Here are ten areas where you could decide upon a few simple rules to make a big improvement in consistency: 1. Writing style: will you use an ultra-formal style or something more relaxed and friendly? 2. Headings: is every letter in headings a capital, just the first letter of each word, or just the first letter of each heading? 3. Other uses of capitals: will you use them for job titles, product names etc. (there are usually a great many instances when writers can decide to use capitals or not - clarifying the preferred option in many of them might be needed). 4. Emphasising text: will you emphasise selected words by using capitals, italics, underlining, emboldening, highlighting or increased size? 5. Abbreviations: will you have stops between letters (like U.S.A.) or not (like USA)? 6. Bullet points: which of the many different ways of formatting bullet point lists will you use? 7. Quotation marks: will you use double or single marks? 8. Jargon: which jargon can go unexplained, and which needs to be clarified for your readers? 9. Formatting of common information: things like addresses, dates, fractions and numbers can all be written in different ways, so which ones will you use? 10. Text columns: will you 'left justify', 'right justify' or 'centre' your text (see the formatting task bar in Word if you don't understand these options). I'm not in anyway suggesting that all the options mentioned above would be sensible. For example I think using all capital letters for headings usually looks terrible. But the point is that there are no rules in the English language for any of the above issues. So the only way to remain consistent is for you to come up with your own. You don't have to go as far as one company I know that published 350 pages of rules (seriously). But making some simple decisions and communicating them to everyone who writes company materials is essential. Not only does a writing guide improve consistency, but it also saves time, as people no longer need to decide how to write or format certain parts of their work: they just consult the guide and get on with it. No more arguments either! Copyright 2003 Richard Groom |