Commas, dashes, and slashes — use a style guide to get them right

Eleanor Meecham | February 28, 2018

Good writing is made up of many elements. You need great content, clear headings, plain words, and engaging layout. But one thing that’s often overlooked is style. Style is the art of keeping all the details consistent — from spelling and punctuation to quotations and numbers.

Image, Duck with a row of ducklings following — keep everything lined up with a good style guide.

Style means getting everything lined up and in order. Image by 6277974 / CCO

To style your words the right way (and the same way every time) you need a good style guide. We’ve just updated ours. It’s concise but comprehensive advice for anyone who writes at work.

What’s in our style guide

The Write Style Guide tells you things like:

Buy The Write Style Guide — in e-book or hardcopy

Image, Sign at a campsite with multiple errors of spelling, punctuation, and capitalisation.

If you’re not sure what’s wrong here, you really need our style guide! Original image by jasper33 / public domain

What’s changed from past editions

We’ve changed our style guide quite a lot since our last printing 4 years ago. You’ll find more advice, better examples, and links to online tools that will help you do complex things quickly and simply.

For example, we’ve added sections on:

Among other things, we’ve also added more advice on how to:

The Write Style Guide is an essential writing tool for anyone who writes at work. Even if you’re ‘just’ writing emails!

Insights, tips, and professional development opportunities.