Why we’re refreshing the editorial style guide
This year the User Experience Service have been working on improving the editorial style guide. In this post, we outline what this work has involved and what’s coming up next.
The editorial style guide is an essential reference point for publishers of digital content across the University. It sets out the conventions for our in-house writing style, including guidance on such things as how we write the date, how we spell ‘programme’, and how we refer to ourselves (always the ‘University of Edinburgh’, not ‘Edinburgh University’).
Alongside this, it also includes guidance on how to improve the accessibility of your digital content, for example by styling headings correctly and by writing link text that is easy to interpret.
In 2022, the User Experience team worked with colleagues from across the University to develop inclusive language guidance. Since then, the guide has not changed much aside from a few minor tweaks.
Read about the Inclusive Language Guide
Why we’re doing this work
This year, we’ve been giving the guide some attention. There are three reasons for this.
We want to bring the guidance in line with our content training
This year, we reworked our Effective Digital Content training course. The course links closely with the style guide as they both provide guidance on how to create accessible, usable digital content.
While the course walks colleagues through what they need to know as a publisher at the University, the style guide acts as a reference point that publishers can refer back to. These two information sources need to be in sync with each other, giving the same messages and backing each other up.
Read about our work on Effective Digital Content
There are two versions of the guide
There are currently two versions of the guide: a PDF version and a web version. This wouldn’t be a problem, but the two guides contain different information. The PDF contains more detailed guidance on spellings of specific words. The web version contains content that isn’t in the PDF, like the inclusive language guidance. Having two versions of a reference point is clearly a problem, because it means publishers don’t know which version to check.
We want to respond to feedback
We don’t want to change the core style guide conventions at the University, but we do want to respond to the feedback we get from publishers about how they’re using it. That means carrying out engagement activities, asking for that feedback, and making changes to the guide as a result.
Aside from this, content needs periodic attention to keep it up to date. We wanted to reinvigorate the guide and keep it as a living document.
What we learned from interviewing style guide users
This summer, Mostafa Ebid joined us on an internship to support our work on the style guide. One of his first tasks was to get in touch with colleagues across the University and arrange interviews with them. These seven interviews helped us to better understand how publishers are using the guide.
Here’s what we learned.
Experienced publishers carry most of the rules in their head
The colleagues we talked to only check the guide when they need to check something. But some remembered starting in their role and using the guide a lot when they were getting started.
Publishers use the PDF version and search it with CTRL+F
Searching the PDF is often quicker than looking for an answer on the website. This is in line with our previous research into how staff use the style guide.
I think it was just a PDF and I completely appreciate that it’s not accessible, but it’s way quicker to CTRL F a PDF than it is to look through the website, especially if you’re not really sure what you’re looking for.
Publishers want a way to feed style guide rules into Generative AI tools
Publishers expressed interest in the idea of using Generative AI tools to check content against the style guide.
I don’t know how possible it is, but if there were a way to link or to feed the style guide into ELM, I just think would be so useful and I think it would catch so many errors from people.
It’s not just about EdWeb
Staff are applying style guide rules within a variety of platforms and content management. Staff also use the style guide for emails.
Science writers have different writing conventions to think about
For scientific writing, the guidance on numbers and units of measurement is inadequate.
On the website section for measurements, there’s only five areas on numbers. Days and dates, money, distances and times. What about all the scientific and medical stuff that we measure?
What followed this research
Mostafa followed this research by exploring how we could extend our central content management system to include a style guide checker. This in turn led to work designing a chat interface for our content management system that would enable publishers to get feedback on their content from ELM, our institutional tool providing access to Large Language Models.
Mostafa’s internship finished up in the summer and he has written up his work here:
Integrating ELM with EdWeb – Building an AI tool for publishers
What we’re working on
Our research up to this point has given us a steer on what needs changing. We’re now reviewing and rewriting pages of the guide, starting with the formatting section.
We’ve now published updated pages:
There will be updates coming soon to sections on:
- Contact details
- Lists
- Italics and capitals
Katie Spearman will write about this work in an upcoming blog post.
We’re continuing to engage with the publishing community
These interviews gave us insight into the views of colleagues who have a keen interest in the style guide. We were also interested in hearing from a wider range of colleagues, and therefore put out a survey asking for feedback.
Our new Digital Content Style Guide Intern Hannah Watson has written up what we learned from the survey here:
An analysis of responses to our editorial style guide survey
If you’d like to talk to us about this work
This is an ongoing piece of work and we’re happy to hear from colleagues. If you would like to talk to us about what you need from the guide, please get in touch.
