How to Create a Proofreading Style Guide for Your Client

As a proofreader, your ultimate goal is to create long-term value for your clients.

Lots of freelancers can correct grammar and spelling errors, though, which means you need to differentiate your services. This means doing more than the bare minimum. But what can you do to rise above the rest of the field?

One way to do this is by creating a style guide—a document specifying the particular spelling and grammar rules your client’s content should follow. This is a best practice that will help you do excellent work and provide long-term value. This blog post will guide you through the process of creating a comprehensive proofreading style guide for your client.

Why style guides are important

As a proofreader, one of the most valuable services you provide to your clients is your ability to bring consistency to written content across the board. You may work with a client to review blog posts, marketing material, emails, social media posts, and more. In every case, you want to make the same changes and corrections. Your client will not be happy, for example, if they notice you change e-book to ebook in some cases but leave it hyphenated in others. Not only that, but consistency across brand content will help instill confidence in their current and potential customers that they are a legitimate business with quality offerings.

So how can you help to provide this consistency? Obviously, part of the answer is verifying spelling against the dictionary and grammar against an authoritative guide like the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) or the AP Stylebook. But not every scenario can be definitively solved with these tools. Language is often as much of an art as it is a science, and even the most exhaustive dictionary does not contain every possible word.

For those questions where an outside source can’t provide an answer (or provides contradictory answers), client style guides are the answer. 

How to start a style guide

Google Docs is the absolute best bet when it comes to making any document intended to be shared. The whole Google ecosystem is designed around sharing and collaborative work. Furthermore, virtually every client is going to understand and work with Google Docs, and if by some chance they don’t, it’s extremely easy to learn and intuitive to use.

Therefore, when starting a new style guide for a proofreading client, simply create a new Google Doc and start typing. (Pro tip: You can type doc.new into your internet browser’s search bar to open up a new, blank Google document automatically.) 

There are really no format requirements to follow with a proofreading style guide. A simple bulleted list is sufficient to get started, although as it grows, you may find a better approach. You can also include tables, section headers, or anything else that will help organize the information.

It’s also a good practice to give the style guide a title that includes the client’s name. There is no need to get creative with this; “[Company Name] Style Guide” is good enough. Be sure to name the document itself (i.e., the file name) with this title and add it at the top of the first page.

What to include in a style guide

It’s important to note at this point that we are talking about a proofreading style guide. There are other types of style guides your client may have (or need), such as documents providing branding or voice guidance. While those are important, a proofreading style guide is specific to the services you provide as a proofreader. That means things like what colors or logos to use, which fonts are approved, and the tone of writing won’t go into this style guide. We’ll look at examples of what does belong in a proofreading style guide below.

With that caveat out of the way, starting the style guide is literally as easy as making notes as you work. You don’t need to set aside any extra time—another bonus. But what exactly should you put in it?

Client preferences

As you work with a client, you will start to figure out what their content needs. Sometimes the client will have preferences. For example, they may prefer that you change any occurrence of e-commerce to eCommerce. If that is the case, add a note to the style guide (something akin to “eCommerce – spelled with capital C, no hyphen”). Likewise, they may have certain requirements when it comes to describing—or spelling—a product or service they provide. These are also natural pieces of information to include in your style guide. If you had Apple as a client, you would want to include a section in your style guide listing out the proper spelling of their various products: iPad, iPhone, MacBook, etc.

Specific grammar, usage, and style guidelines

There will also be grammar, usage, and style questions that you will need to define. For instance, will you follow CMOS or AP guidelines when it comes to writing out numbers? Your client may not have a preference, but you will need to define it to ensure consistency. The same may apply to capitalization. There may be words that, while normally lowercase, make sense to capitalize in your context. (As an example, I have a note in one of my style guides to capitalize the names of market niches—e.g., “the Health and Wellness category on Amazon”. It makes sense for their content and, more importantly, aids in reader comprehension.)

In the same vein, you could define capitalization rules for headings. When and how will you make use of headline capitalization? Will H3 text be formatted the same as H2 text, and if not, what are the differences? Define them in the style guide.

Commonly used terms

Another section of your style guide could be a guide to commonly used terms. Perhaps your client constantly refers to SEO companies like Ahrefs, Semrush, or HubSpot. Rather than looking up these unusual spellings every time you come across them, simply add the correct spellings to your style guide. You can do the same thing with medical or scientific terminology, marketing terms or acronyms, or anything else that might be specialized in your client’s industry.

These are just a few examples of what you could put in a style guide. To put it simply, add anything that is going to make your job easier and provide value to your client.

Maintaining and updating a style guide

You can think of a style guide as a living document. It’s never really “finished” because there is always the chance that you might need to add to it. The good news is this makes maintaining and updating the document straightforward.

Once you have created the style guide, you will want to have it open in a background tab or second window whenever you are performing work for that client. Of course, the main reason for this is so you can reference it as you proofread. But the other reason to have it open is to add new requirements to the document as they arise.

Let’s say you come across a new term that requires some digging to find the correct spelling or usage. Furthermore, it looks like a word that you are likely to find in the client’s content in the future. Once you’ve determined what “correct” looks like for the term, you can simply switch over to your style guide and add a new bullet point.

To reiterate, the beauty of this approach is that it only takes a few seconds to make this addition, and it shouldn’t even take you out of your proofreading flow, but it will provide value to both you and your client for years to come.

When to share a style guide with your client

A proofreading style guide is a tool that primarily you are going to use, but gifting it to the client is still the end goal. This is key for several reasons. 

First, it shows your client that you are willing and able to go above and beyond in providing value. Second, it’s a gift that your client can use well into the future. Even after your contract with them is over, they can still take steps to ensure their content is consistent. It’s this long-term value that helps to retain clients and even raise your rates over time.

As far as when to share a style guide with a client, there is not necessarily a “right” time. You probably don’t want to share it if there are only four or five bullet points, but you don’t need to wait until it’s novella length, either. My rule of thumb is once you have at least three-quarters of a page of notes, it’s probably good enough to share with your client. Simply let them know that you’ve been working on a document to ensure consistency when you proofread their work. Then give them edit access to the document. Make it clear that while you will still update and manage it, this is their document that they will get to keep.

What to do if your client already has a style guide

Most clients who hire you are not going to have a proofreading style guide, but some actually do. In these cases, they should share it with you. (You can always ask new clients if they have such a document.) Nine times out of 10, their style guide is incomplete, poorly managed, or out of date. 

You can still provide value by taking notes about how to improve or update their existing guide. (Of course, you’ll need to bring these up as suggestions, not mandates!) Most clients will be happy to update their guide based on your suggestions, and many will even give you edit access to do the work yourself. At the end of the day, the result is the same either way: the client has a robust style guide and you to thank for it.

Conclusion

Creating a proofreading style guide for your client is a great way to go above and beyond and ensure consistency across content. Getting started is as easy as opening up a new Google Doc, and updating and maintaining it takes almost no extra time. Gifting a useful, robust style guide to your client shows initiative and further solidifies your value in their eyes.

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