Essay
The case for a house style
Every organisation already has a house style. It is just unwritten, inconsistent, and defended most fiercely by whoever has been there longest.
Every organisation already has a house style. It is just unwritten, and defended most fiercely by whoever has been there longest.
Writing it down is not about commas. It is about the three or four decisions that actually make a difference — how you refer to the people you serve, whether you use the first person, what you do with numbers and dates — and then getting out of the way.
The document that results should be short enough that somebody reads it on their first day, and long enough that it settles the argument your team keeps having. Ours run to about nine pages. Anything past twenty is a book nobody opens.
