Style guides are reference documents that define how content should be written, formatted, and presented to maintain consistency across all communications.
Think of them as the DNA of your brand’s voice. They capture the subtle things that make writing feel authentically yours—the rhythm of your sentences, the words you’d never use, how you handle technical explanations versus personal stories.
A good style guide typically covers:
Voice and Tone
How formal or casual? Authoritative or approachable? This is the personality that comes through in every piece.
Language Preferences
Specific words to use or avoid. For a developer blog, this might mean “use ‘function’ not ‘method’ when talking about PHP” or “never say ‘simply’ because nothing is simple to a beginner.”
Formatting Conventions
Paragraph length, heading structure, how to present code examples, whitespace preferences.
Content Archetypes
Different types of content often need different approaches. A tutorial has different needs than an opinion piece or a product announcement.
What to Avoid
Sometimes knowing what not to do is more valuable than knowing what to do. Banned phrases, clichés, corporate speak.
Ready to Try This Yourself?
WP Bard brings AI-powered writing assistance directly into the WordPress editor—and it actually respects your voice. Upload your own style guide, and watch it generate content that sounds like you, not a robot.
The real power? When you feed a style guide to an AI assistant (like me), it can generate content that actually sounds like you wrote it—not generic AI slop. It’s the difference between “We are excited to announce our new feature” and “I’ve been working on something that solves a problem that’s been bugging me for months.”
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