Completed by Veena S & Jae Eun S in Sep 2023

✅ = Style guide contains this topic

◻️ = Style guide does not contain this topic

⚠️ = Recommendation for change (include rationale)

Audit

Topic Subtopic Our Style Guide Mailchimp Atlassian Google Microsoft
TL;DR - ✅⚠️ Needs to be expanded on or removed ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️
Purpose - ✅ ✅ = Writing Goals & Principles ◻️ ✅ ✅
Voice & Tone - ✅ ✅ ✅ = Voice and tone principles, Writing Style ✅ ✅
Common Use Cases Confirmation ✅ ◻️ ✅ = Warning message ◻️ ◻️
Acknowledgment ✅ ◻️ ✅ = Info messages ◻️ ◻️
Error messages ✅ ◻️ ✅ ◻️ ✅
Empty states &
Placeholder text ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ✅ ✅
Calls to action (CTAs) ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️ ✅
Word list/ Taxonomies CTAs ✅ ◻️ ✅ = Vocabulary list ✅ ✅
Identity (gender, trans, orientation, race & ethnicity) ✅
⚠️ Would be relevant and helpful to add similar writing guidelines to other SGs ✅ = Writing About People ✅ = Inclusive Language, Language and Grammar/Gender ✅ Inclusive language/ Global audience ✅
Words to avoid/never use ✅ ✅ = Word List ✅ = Inclusive Language ✅ ✅ = word list
Inclusive word list ◻️⚠️ Would be relevant and helpful to add ✅ = Word List ✅ = Inclusive Language ✅ ✅
Grammar and Mechanics Punctuation: Periods ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Punctuation: Commas ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Punctuation: Exclamation points ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Punctuation: Quotation marks ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Punctuation: Dashes and hyphens ✅⚠️ Seems overly specific for our platform ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Capitalization ✅ ✅ = Many sections in Grammar and Mechanics ✅ ✅ ✅
Redefining Professionalism ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️
Informal language & Abbreviation ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Contractions ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Lists ✅⚠️ Needs to be expanded on ✅ = Web Elements/Lists ✅ ◻️ ◻️
Dates & numbers ✅⚠️ Needs to be separated for numbers to be expanded on ✅ ✅ *very detailed Dates and time section ✅ ✅
Active & passive voice ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Percentage ✅⚠️ Seems overly specific for our platform ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️
Spelling & formatting ✅⚠️ Missing formatting guidelines, needs to be moved to Word list/taxonomies ✅ = Word List ✅ = Vocabulary list ✅ ✅
Emojis ✅ ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️
Accessibility Guidelines & best practices ✅ ✅ = Writing for Accessibility/Guidelines/Use alt text and Web Elements/Guidelines/Alt text ✅ ✅. = Accessibility guidelines and requirement
Alt text ✅ ✅ ◻️ ✅ ✅
Hashtags ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️
Hierarchy & Headers ✅ ✅ = Web Elements/Headings and subheadings ◻️ ✅ ✅
Closed captioning & transcripts ✅ ✅ ◻️ ◻️ ◻️
Link copy ✅ ✅ = Web Elements/Links ✅ = People, places and things/URLs and websites, ✅ ✅

Comparative Analysis

Topic Our Style Guide Mailchimp Atlassian Google Microsoft
Web Elements ⚠️ Would be relevant and helpful to add to Common use cases section Web Elements
Buttons, Checkboxes, Drop-down menus, Forms, Navigation, Radio Buttons, Related articles, Titles, SEO Language and grammar
Titles and headings, UI elements
Writing guidelines
Success message, Feature discovery Fonts and font size, Buttons, and icons, Menu bar, navigation menu, toolbar, text box, check box, tab, list box, toggle, Images, Text formatting summary Text formatting -Formatting common text elements, headings, titles, Global communication, Buttons, Commands, dialog boxes, menu, Images, color and patterns in text, graphics and design
Grammar and Mechanics ⚠️ Would be relevant and helpful to add Abbreviations and acronyms
Numbers
Time
People, places and things
Pronouns; Quotes, Schools; States, cities, and countries
Slang and jargon
Text formatting
Write positively Language and grammar
Pronouns, Direct quotes, Bold, Italics Sentence structure, present tense, spelling, verbs, ellipses, Link text, link to other sites, headings and titles Words ending in ing, ****ellipses, responsive content, scannable content, writing for all abilities, bias-free communication, spellings, and non-English words, jargon, links
Grammar and Mechanics Irrelevant to our platform Punctuation
Apostrophes, Colons, Ellipses, Question marks, Semicolons, Ampersands
Numbers
Decimals and fractions, Ranges and spans, Money, Telephone numbers, Temperature
People, places and things
Writing about Mailchimp, Writing about other companies Language and grammar
Colons, Monospaced text, Possessives, Style, US English paragraphs, tables, dates and times, numbers, phone numbers, units of measurement, Abbreviations, Active voice, articles, prepositions, pronouns, dashes, colons, commas, hyphens, quotation marks, Url and web addresses, numbers, accessibility guidelines, and requirements, word choice, Grammar and parts of speech, verbs, nouns, pronouns, numbers, punctuations, dashes and hyphens, question marks, slashes, colons, periods, ****
Other Irrelevant to our platform Writing Legal Content, Writing Email Newsletters, Writing for Social Media, Writing for Translation, Creating Structured Content, Copyright and Trademarks File names, trademarks, HTML formatting, code in text, placeholder formatting developer content, code examples, formatting developer text elements, reference documentation, chatbot content

Recommendations based on Audit & Comparative Analysis

Topic/Section Recommendation Explanation
TL;DR ⚠️ Expand on or remove Current: copy + paste of Voice & Tone section
Mailchimp was the only other SG with TL;DR section
Word list/Taxonomies ⚠️ Expand on (possibly in another section) Current: list of words for Gender/identity, Orientation, Race and ethnicity that are being concept tested by UXR
Add writing guidelines similar to Mailchimp’s Writing about People section, Atlassian’s Inclusive Language and Gender sections, and Google’s Inclusive language section
Word list/Taxonomies ⚠️ Add inclusive word list
Grammar and Mechanics: Punctuation: Dashes and hyphens ⚠️ Remove? Seems overly specific to our platform since we are not writing longer documents
Grammar and Mechanics:
Lists ⚠️ Expand on Currently only one sentence regarding periods after list items
Grammar and Mechanics:
Dates & numbers ⚠️ Separate into two sections
Expand on numbers
Grammar and Mechanics:
Percentages ⚠️ Remove? Seems like an overly specific use case
Grammar and Mechanics:
Spelling and formatting
Grammar and Mechanics:
Capitalization ⚠️ Move to Word list/taxonomies
Add formatting guidelines No information on formatting
Rather than having a Capitalization section (or in addition to this section) add formatting guidelines divided by type of content (ex. headers, body, button, icon label)
Copy from Phase 2 scattered throughout SG regarding the document as a work in progress ⚠️ Remove Ex. “…can be updated in future phases”, “We recommend Phase III UXW…” and “This list should continue to be updated in future phases”