GrammarPhile Blog

Most writers want to believe their writing will be read, understood, liked, and shared with others simply because it’s well written. They believe the essence and content of their writing and its message is what really matters. But that’s not always the case. Many times documents and posts will go unread simply because they’re not properly formatted, regardless of their content.

Use the tips below to format your writing in a way that will make it stand out, and make it easier for your audience to read. 

Most businesses have produced a lot of content across a wide variety of channels. Between social media, blogs and website content, it’s difficult to keep track of everything that’s out there. It’s important to remember that the value and appearance of your content are a direct reflection of your business and can significantly impact your reputation.

Last week, we talked about remedying the content and stylistic inconsistencies often found in large documents — specifically, the importance of getting a handle on how your final document should look before you begin writing. This week, we narrow the focus to talk about how to bridge the gap between your vision and the final product.

That’s where templates, style sheets and style guides come in handy. They allow you to create the stylistic elements you want and to apply them uniformly throughout the document to ensure unparalleled consistency. We provide an overview of these tools below, without detailing how to create them (online tutorials abound on how to create templates and style sheets in Word, and we’ll talk in a future post about how to develop your own style guide).

We edit a fair number of large documents, often put together by multiple people or teams. Each project has its idiosyncrasies, but a common problem among nearly all of them is a lack of consistency, stemming from different:

• Writing styles
• Page layout/structure
• Graphics formatting/style
• Heading and text styles
• Word choice/usage
• Mechanics (punctuation and, particularly, capitalization)