Why Your Library Needs a Style Guide

Improve your library's consistency across content with this foundational document

Posted on March 9, 2026

Authors:

Robin Camille Davis
Librarians collaborating on a style guide to improve UX at their universities

Libraries don’t just contain, preserve, and share content—they also create it. A lot of it! Your library probably has an extensive website, a collection of handouts, plenty of email templates, and years’ worth of social media posts. And being a place of collaboration, your library’s content probably has multiple authors.

How can you ensure that your library’s written output sounds consistent? How can you avoid the whiplash between a website that sounds friendly and welcoming and an overdue notice that sounds formal or even harsh?

Answer: a style guide!

Why should your library have a style guide?

When many authors write content that represents one organization, a style guide can help them maintain consistency in these areas:

  • Voice: All materials should sound like they represent the same entity with the same core values.

  • Professionalism and trust: Inconsistencies (such as using both “e-mail” and “email”) can create friction for a reader. Avoid this by establishing a uniform approach to the stylistic side of writing. The care you put into details and consistency shows professionalism and meticulousness, and it helps build trust with your readers.

  • Brand recognition: Using the correct logo and brand colors makes it clear that the materials are “officially” from your library. These visual cues tell the user that the content has been vetted and is the result of scholarly expertise.

Publishing guidance in these areas can save staff time! Instead of waffling between stylistic options—”should this say ‘business day’ or ‘weekday’?”—the author can refer quickly to an internal reference guide. Additionally, a style guide helps to preserve institutional memory, so that even though staff changes, your materials remain consistent.

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How to create a style guide

Perhaps you’re already thinking, Oh no, not another committee! But yes, a style guide should be a collaborative effort, not least for the sake of buy-in. A few tips for the collaborative process:

  • Write asynchronously and review in meetings. Ideally, you won’t start a meeting with a blank document and a blinking cursor.

  • Describe what your library already does. Beware of creating a style guide that will require overhauling every piece of written content.

  • Include good and bad examples. This is helpful for your collaborators and for your style guide’s future readers.

Let’s talk about what your style guide should include.

Nuts and bolts

You don’t have to cover everything in your style guide—you can point to a published manual of style for the basics. Your library’s written materials could conform to Chicago style, AP style, and so forth. You and your colleagues (and possibly your communications department) might already be adhering to such a style, so make sure you start your guide off with a helpful link to the manual.

Additionally, you might excerpt some tips from the style guide for words and phrases that frequently occur across your website, handouts, and social media, such as…

  • Ebook/ebook or eBook or e-book?

  • 9AM or 9:00 A.M. or 9am?

Voice

Every individual has a different writing style, but when you and your colleagues are all writing as one library, you should aim for a consistent voice. Does the voice skew formal or casual? Friendly or professional? What’s its personality?

Determining your library’s voice will guide style decisions like how often to use contractions, the second person, the passive voice, and exclamation points. It will also help you to frame rules: when will you phrase things positively versus negatively?

Here’s the same concept in different voices:

  • Formal, professional, and unequivocal: Technology lending items such as laptops must be returned while the circulation desk is staffed; these items cannot be returned after the library’s closing hours.

  • Friendly, informal, and empathetic: You can return technology items (like laptops) to the circulation desk. Be sure to return them during our open hours—we can’t accept them after we close, sorry!

Most libraries find their voice somewhere in the middle of those two examples. I’m a proponent of a casual, friendly style; most web writing tends to sound more casual, so formal wording can feel jarring. Plus, plain language is easier to understand.

Branding

Maybe your library name is an easy one—or maybe there could be several potential ways you could refer to it. The library where I work is the D. H. Hill Jr. Library, and it can be difficult to remember that there’s a space between the initials and no comma after “Jr.” Include the correct styling of your library’s name in your guide.

In addition, include your library’s logo and any variants for quick downloading or linking. Note any branding guidelines about where and how to use the logo.

Content-specific guidance

Consider writing up tips for content types that you and your colleagues create frequently.

LibGuides

  • How many tabs is too many tabs?

  • Should every guide include the author’s profile box?

  • Are there any limitations to text formatting?

Events

  • How long should event descriptions be?

  • What accessibility information should be included?

Database descriptions

  • Should descriptions be complete sentences, or are sentence fragments okay?

  • What information must be conveyed for each database?

  • How long should descriptions be?

Wayfinding and signage

  • What are the “official” names for library spaces? E.g., “stacks” or “shelves”? “Floor 2” or “2nd floor”?

  • What tone should various sign types have?

  • Are there restrictions on the use of all-caps, icons, and handwritten signs?

Once you have a style guide, what happens next?

Publish it! Put it on your intranet or even on a public part of your website.

Share it! Announce its existence to all staff. Email the link to everyone. Ask for feedback. Include it in new employee onboarding materials.

Use it! Bring it up in projects that involve public-facing writing. Plan an “edit-a-thon” to identify outdated content and revise it to conform to the style guide. (Bonus tip: your ILS’s automated emails could probably do with a good cleanup.)

Remember, style guides are living documents. You’ll continue to update your style guide as new issues come up and new decisions are made.

Good examples of style guides

From libraries:

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