My first introduction to style and technical writing was just a few weeks ago when I worked on a team content audit and assessment project for my Digital Content Strategy course. It was my first course in technical communication and my first real exposure to the ins and outs of what technical communicators actually do.

The client’s style guide was among the materials we were given to help us in our research. It was some 150-ish pages full of writing instructions, and I had never seen anything like it. We were directed to use only a couple of sections of the guide for the purposes of our project, like banned terms and common terminology, but that didn’t stop me from reading through the rest of the document. I was surprised that I was surprised that organizations are intentional about their actions, right down to the words that they put on their products, their web pages, in their documentation, and anywhere else.

It was the first time I said to myself – “That’s what all the fuss is about!” I hadn’t fully realized all of the many layers that make up Technical Communication. I’m looking forward to learning about all the facets of this particular layer, style in technical communication.

Something surprising
I was fascinated by the Mailchimp Content Style Guide. Our assignment for Module 1 of the course instructed us to spend 25 minutes reading the guide. I ended up reading the entire thing.

I am familiar with Mailchimp because of their pervasive commercials on the podcasts I listen to, but I never knew much about the organization and its services. I learned so much about the company simply by reading its Content Style Guide. It’s not surprising that this particular content style guide is considered the ideal for how clean it is and how easy it is to navigate. And I’d have to add that it is a pretty entertaining read, as style guides go.

Something influential to my assignments
For the first major assignment in Style and Technical Writing, we are writing a report to recommend an existing content guide to a company that is looking to adapt a guide to fit its voice and tone goals. The instructions were to just pick 2 random guides from a list and move on to work on the report, due to the time constraints of the course. However, I spent a little more time looking through the list of content guides that were available for us to choose from.

I learned that content guides are quite varied in scope and construction. Some of them are incredibly instructive, and some of them are kind of vague and hard to follow. Sometimes the guides are written in the desired voice of the organization, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes there is crossover in voice and tone definitions between different guides. They are all unique, which reinforces the point that Dr. Kim kept referencing in her video lecture – that there is no single, one-size-fits-all content guide.

Something meaningful for my career
I read about a topic in Mailchimp’s Content Style Guide that I hadn’t ever encountered before. The difference between person-first and identity-first language. I was aware of the need for sensitivity in writing when addressing certain groups of people, but these concepts were new to me.

As stated in Mailchimp’s guide, person-first language “describes what the person ‘has’ rather than what the person ‘is.’” You don’t write “the person is an addict,” you write “the person is in recovery from a substance abuse disorder.” This way you emphasize the person, rather than the disability. Person-first is used more commonly in formal writing.

Identity-first language “emphasizes the person before the disability,” according to the Mailchimp guide. For example, “the autistic person,” rather than “they are autistic.” According to several search hits I found, more people tend to prefer identity-first.

There is no hard-and-fast rule about which language to use, and when in doubt you should just ask the person about their preference. It’s always better to let the person choose rather than a stranger. I’m pleased that I read far enough into the Mailchimp Content Style Guide to come across these language approaches and how to use them. Moving forward, I’ll be aware of them and will be able to practice them in my writing.