How to make great use of the General Content Principles section in your style guide

What are the practical applications for a “General Content Principles” section in a style guide? Do we add this section for largely performative reasons? If these principles are so important, why do so few people consult them, apart from taking a quick glance and appreciating that they exist? Can they be leveraged in a way that provides real impact and value for a content design practice?

I keep coming back to these questions when working on style guides. Many contain a section called something like “General Principles” that lays out the basic content heuristics (principles that define good content) defined by the content design practice. It often includes things like clarity, consistency, readability, accessibility, inclusivity, progressive disclosure, and avoiding unnecessary jargon. Yet despite the importance of these heuristics, it’s rare for someone to consult that section regularly. They’re often dusty artifacts that are rarely updated. If you have access to analytics you can see how many people visit this section, though keep in mind that the number of visits is likely a highly inaccurate representation of how many people actually use that section to improve their writing (especially if it’s your style guide’s landing page).

So what are some practical applications for a General Principles section that can have real impact and value for a content design team? I recently reread Erica Jorgensen’s fantastic book Strategic Content Design: Tools and Research Techniques for Better UX, and I love these amazing and actionable ideas she offers:

⏳ Do you receive requests on short notice for “Just a quick error message” or “A short label—should only take you a minute”? Erica suggests that you leverage the content heuristics in your General Principles section to buy yourself more time to give these tasks the effort and care they deserve! You can respond with a link to your General Principles and say that you’ll need more time to complete the ask because it will take time to create the content and ensure that it meets the 12 heuristics that define high quality content for your product. That gives them a glimpse—with substantiating numbers and documentation—into why creating even just a short label or error message is typically not a “quick ask” that can be done on short turnaround.

📓 Point to your General Principles section when stakeholders from outside the Content team take issue with some aspect of your copy. If you need to justify a content choice, being able to mention (or even link to) a heuristic in your style guide that supports it can save you a lot of time. It also helps demonstrate that your team is making intentional choices based on a carefully selected list of criteria.

📝 Use your content principles as way to guide feedback during review sessions and crits. Feedback on writing can sometimes feel subjective. If you base your feedback on your team’s content heuristics, it may feel more constructive and actionable, and less arbitrary.

Thanks, Erica, for these awesome ideas!