We always use the same tone of voice, based on our company personality and values, and we always think about which audience we are speaking to. Our Style Guide lays out how we format the language.
What’s a style guide?
A style guide is a playbook for the mechanics of how we use language, including: grammar, punctuation, and syntax. It sets out which spellings we use (UK English); and which measurement system we use (metric). This means we write realise, not realize, and cms, not inches.
The Style Guide also sets out a whole lot of other “style” rules, such as whether we write numbers in full; use ampersands or ands; and when we capitalise headings or job titles.
It’s important that anyone who writes copy, references the style guide rules. Along with our tone of voice, this creates a unified persona for the company, and builds trust with our consumers and clients.
EDMs, Advertorial, Editorial & SEO articles
When writing copy for EDMs advertorial and editorial pieces, we speak from ArchiPro’s point of view and never the client’s. This means we don’t talk about “our” products or “our” project.
We also avoid superlatives. This means we never say a product or design is the “best”, the “least” or the “greatest”. The reason for this is that we maintain a fair platform for all of our suppliers and professionals and ensure there are no statements that directly privilege one over another.
In all our articles, we avoid capitalising headings and sub-headings (apart from the first letter). However we do capitalise the name of a product (but not the product type).
For example,
Bold and beautiful: large format Kantura tiles.
(Kantura is the product name, tiles is the product type.)
Use of Trademarks and Registered Symbols
ArchiPro's copy is clean, modern and consistent across all of our written material, whether editorial or advertorial. To ensure our copy is cohesive and maintains a contemporary and editorial feel, we do not include trademarks or registered symbols (™ or Ⓡ signs) in headers, sub-heads or body copy.
To ensure there are no legal ramifications for our clients, if a trademark product or brand is mentioned in the copy, we provide a legal disclaimer at the bottom of the article.
For your ArchiPro profile, you may use trademarks or registered symbols in both the title and product description - this only applies to copy and editorial written by the ArchiPro editorial team.
For example:
Disclaimer: Flexiwood™ and Flexiclad™ are registered trademarks of Flexi Claddings Limited.
Other basic rules:
- We capitalise professionals’ job titles
- We don’t use ampersands (&) in advertorial or editorial (we do in marketing and internal material)
- New Zealand is spelled in full (not always in marketing material)
- One to nine are spelled in full, 10 and above are numerical
- % is written per cent (two words)
- We don’t use product names, company names or brand names repeatedly.
Social Media
Our social media channels are an important opportunity to connect with our audience, show who we are and build our brand. Therefore, using our unique tone of voice is very important in this space.
In terms of style, we stick with the advertorial/editorial style, and we don’t use exclamation points or emojis.
We don’t illustrate the images with overly long descriptions, but instead attempt to tease the viewer with the text and encourage them to answer the CTA to find out more.