House Style and the Zombie Apocalypse

Despite the title, I don't think a house style guide will help you much in the zombie apocalypse. But this article makes a good case that it may make your job a lot easier.

Specifying a preference for one of several equally valid options helps establish your editorial authority and helps your editorial team work together. Nobody has to make the initial decision and communicate that to the rest of the team. You reap the most benefits if you use the same editors over and over—they’ll quickly adapt to your house style and use it automatically for your projects.

When I started at the TSX (now TMX Group), our marketing department had a reasonably complete style guide. That went by the wayside after corporate mergers and reorganizations and platform changes on our intranet. I used parts of it to create my own style guide, but never had the politcal clout to get it established as a departmental standard, much less a corporate one. That was unfortunate, and made my life more difficult on several occasions when I had to edit documents from other departments or had to incorporate their content in mine.