What is a Healthcare Writing Style Guide (& Why You Need One)

A writing fashion information outlines important dos and don’ts, giving writers and different key stakeholders a toolkit for creating on-brand content material that meets your wants and expectations—whereas eliminating repetitive or arbitrary edits.

Similar to your model fashion information helps folks use your logos and model colours correctly, a writing fashion information dives even deeper into the way to write content material on your model.

This deeper dive consists of fashion selections for every thing from the Oxford comma (sure, or no?) to the way to spell your enterprise title throughout varied places.

I say “residing doc” as a result of your content material fashion information ought to by no means be set in stone. It ought to be up to date, refined, or added to as new preferences are recognized.

A model fashion information often consists of the fundamentals of brand name messaging (tagline, worth proposition, messaging pillars) and essence (voice, tone, and character).

So, should you haven’t already, making a foundational model fashion information is important to cultivating model recognition.

Let’s dive into the nuts and bolts of a healthcare content material fashion information tailor-made for your enterprise.

The Desk of Content material for a typical fashion information may embrace the next sections:

• Writing Objectives and Ideas
• Voice and Tone
• Writing About Your Enterprise
• Grammar Guidelines and Mechanics
• Tips for Varied Varieties of Content material

Right here’s what you may embrace in every of those sections:

Determine what you need each bit of printed content material to realize on your model—and the way you intention to realize these targets.

For instance, when writing content material for the Healthcare Success weblog, we intention to coach, information, and encourage our readers in a pleasant and useful method. To attain these targets, we work arduous to make sure our content material is well-researched, related, helpful, straightforward to know, and relatable.

If not included within the model fashion information, it’s essential to stipulate your model’s authorized voice and acceptable tone variations. Listed here are some insights for every:

Model voice is the distinct and distinctive character your model makes use of throughout all its communications to attraction to its target market.

Constructing a constant model voice throughout platforms affords peace of thoughts and builds belief along with your target market. One of the simplest ways to stipulate your model voice in your content material advertising and marketing fashion information is to offer language and messaging examples that showcase your traits, terminology, and model values.

Listed here are 4 straightforward steps to create a model voice:

• Know your target market and construct affected person personas
• Set up your character traits (e.g., genuine, compassionate, reliable, useful, playful, and so on.)
• Describe what these traits imply to your model
• Determine clear do’s and don’ts

A model voice by no means modifications. However the tone varies relying on the goal persona, the subject, the place they’re within the purchaser’s journey, and which channel they’re on.

For instance, when writing copy on your firm web site, it’s possible you’ll go for a proper tone that conveys heat, compassion, and understanding. Nevertheless, when speaking with followers on social media, it’s possible you’ll pivot to a extra relaxed, casual tone that conveys the identical factor.

In each instances, your character and values stay the identical (model voice), however the way you talk shifts (model tone).

Each healthcare writing fashion information ought to embrace an inventory of dos and don’ts for writing about your enterprise.

This record ought to embrace the proper approach to seek advice from your model (e.g., “Healthcare Success” vs. “Well being Care Success, LLC”) and merchandise, the way to seek advice from your target market (e.g., shoppers, purchasers, or sufferers), and the way to seek advice from your docs and specialists.

If your enterprise has a number of places, you may additionally embrace most well-liked emails and telephone numbers for every location.

The College of Utah lays it out succinctly for its major model and 5 hospitals:

I’d additionally like to focus on the significance of getting clear tips for extra delicate companies, comparable to dependancy facilities for alcohol and substance use.

Compassion and therapeutic are paramount when writing content material for dependancy and restoration facilities. Subsequently, a medical writing fashion information should embrace an inventory of phrases and phrases to keep away from (e.g., addict, drug addict, alcoholic, substance abuse, and so on.) and establish most well-liked alternate options (e.g., an individual with dependancy, addicted individual, substance use dysfunction, and so on.).

The Nationwide Institutes of Well being Type Information has a complete set of tips for this trade:

To maintain your writing clear and constant, it’s important to obviously define your “home guidelines” for issues like:

• Energetic vs. passive voice
  Stress the significance and supply examples of lively voice. Share examples of when passive voice could also be acceptable.
• Punctuation
  Do you know that the majority punctuation guidelines are fashion selections? Reply the age-old query of whether or not or to not use the Oxford comma and embrace guidelines for semicolons, ellipses, colons, apostrophes, and so on.
• Capitalization
  Define your preferences for specialties, diseases, situations, positions, or something that isn’t a correct noun. That is additionally a wonderful place to make clear your intention for phrases like e-mail, web, web site, and so on.
• Hyphens
  Share whether or not you need to use an en sprint (-) or an em sprint (—) in your sentences.
  Additionally, establish an inventory of phrases that ought to or shouldn’t be hyphenated (e.g., long-term, well-being, follow-up, C-section, and so on.)
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
  Maintain your expectations clear and constant on your writers. It’s finest apply to spell out acronyms the primary time you point out a time period in a chunk of content material, then use the abbreviation for all different references. For instance, as a substitute of writing ADHD, spell out consideration deficit hyperactivity dysfunction the primary time you utilize it.
• Bulleted lists
  Present tips for the way to format your bulleted lists. Do you need to embrace a colon after each introductory sentence? Do you need to add a interval on the finish of each bulleted record merchandise? Do you need to start sentence fragments with a capital letter? Define these preferences to make sure they’re constant all through your content material.
• Dates
  Clearly state the way you need your dates to be offered to make sure they’re constant throughout all content material varieties and platforms.
• Numbers
  Determine whether or not you’ll use a % image or write the phrase proportion. Additionally, clearly state whether or not you need to use durations, hyphens, or parentheses when writing phone numbers (e.g., 555.555.5555 vs. (555) 555-5555)

A complete writing fashion information ought to embrace rules for writing several types of content material and basic tips for writing (e.g., preserve sentences and paragraphs brief, use plain language, and so on.).

For instance:

When crafting e-mail communications, it’s essential to concentrate to element. On this part, figuring out the next parts will assist preserve your e-mail communications constant, which helps construct belief along with your viewers:

• From title: Select a reputation that or title that shall be recognizable to your viewers and preserve it constant throughout all enterprise communications.
  Topic line: Define whether or not all caps or emojis are acceptable and establish the goal character size.
• Preheader textual content: As with the topic line, it’s essential to stipulate whether or not all caps or emojis are acceptable and establish the goal character size.
• Physique copy: Share your expectations on objective, size, imagery, and format.
• Name to motion: Determine particular calls to motion and the way they’re capitalized (e.g., Schedule an Appointment, E book On-line, schedule a go to, and so on.).

This information may also define authorized e-mail signatures for inside and exterior communications. UCLA Well being does an amazing job of explaining the way to create an e-mail signature and what it ought to appear like:

Social media can really feel just like the Wild West at occasions. Because of this, it’s important to put out guiding rules that can preserve your messages clear, constant, and out of scorching water.

First, define which social media platforms your enterprise will use, their official character limits, and your finest practices for every. Subsequent, establish an inventory of dos and don’ts to maintain your content material skilled (e.g., keep away from extreme exclamation factors, by no means ask customers to share your content material, and so on.).

It’s additionally essential to obviously state your hashtag technique. Embody an inventory of most well-liked hashtags (and hashtags to keep away from), the utmost and minimal variety of hashtags every put up ought to embrace, and whether or not together with trending hashtags is suitable.

Your enterprise wants a complete content material fashion information to maintain content material constant and on-brand throughout all platforms. This information is essential for manufacturers trying to scale their enterprise.

This doc eliminates guesswork when creating content material—from the preliminary draft to posting on-line.

Giving executives, account managers, writers, and different content material creators a information that clearly outlines how issues ought to be written or offered helps preserve everybody on model. It additionally eliminates bottlenecks throughout every section of the evaluate and approval course of.

Model consistency additionally supplies a constructive consumer expertise on your target market.

Learn how to Create a Content material Type Information for Healthcare Manufacturers