UX Writing Drill Down

A content style guide is a set of writing principles that inform all of the copy and content of a company’s products. Content style guides establish rules and guidelines for copy that help bring consistency to the product’s voice and help shape brand personality. Anyone creating content for the product should make use of it. If a company has a solid, well-written style guide, even the developers should be able to use it.

Your product’s content style guide should be one of the major factors in making decisions about copy throughout the life of the product.

Content Style Guides and Design Systems

In the first module, we stressed how, ideally, product teams would be comprised of programmers/developers, designers, and writers. As this idea catches on, it’s having an impact on design systems. Don’t think of the content style guide as something separate from the design system, but rather as an important part of one. Ideally, all of the various components together (graphics, code, and content guides) will constitute the larger design system of a company or product.

In order to create that alignment not only with design creation but with content creation as well, product teams need to have a better understanding of the content style guide. As a UX writer, part of your job will be to advocate for and educate other team members about content style guides. The idea of a writer as part of the product design team is catching on, but it certainly hasn’t caught on everywhere yet.

Depending on the nature of the company or product, the style guide may be the largest component of the design guide. On the other hand, you may encounter a design system that completely lacks a style guide. Finally, you might find yourself in a small company that doesn’t have a design system at all.

Whichever the case may be, as a UX writer, it’s important to understand what design systems are and how you and the other members of the product design team connect to them.