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Style guides have a long history in the writing process.
Theyve always affected more than what counts as good content.
They affected our writing process and behaviors, our sense of community, even our egos.
As AI pushes the style guide another step, how will it push us along too?
They were made for print, in print.
Some mysterious crew would sit within a flickering fluorescent den and make decisions for the masses.
Updates were published infrequently to a lot of anticipation.
[Read:Are EVs too expensive?
We used them together with the printed style guides.
Helpful as that was, it missed things or made wacky suggestions when the language was too intricate.
It was easy to feel like the boss, even though Im a terrible speller.
Spell checks gave me cover and a pass.
Did it even matter that I couldnt spell?
I mistakenly believed house had something to with drag family.
Deciding on our own unique guidelines was group activity that contributed to our brand and our teams identity.
Online style guides
When the web happened, we got e style guides.
Younger folks: e was the abbreviated electronic and synonymous with exciting.
These were literally a digital version of the book with a search box and hyperlinks between entries.
Every team had someone who memorized the entry titles and numbers as a service to the rest of us.
Also to show off.
We needed to think of the guidelines themselves as content and as part of our scope.
Copy-paste all over the place
Next came web sites known as auto checkers.
They offered a growing variety of features like keyword extraction for tagging.
Though, a whole website was dedicated to one feature alone.
I had to leave Google Docs and bounce between a bunch of web client tabs to catch everything.
Knowing where to go and in what order was part of the job.
We exchanged and recommended links to these checkers like insiders.
AI writing assistants
The next generation style guide is here now.
AI improves the quality of automated language checks in the context of what the content means.
The suggestions are delivered out to teams as they write, where teams write.
My team manages Writer for Intuit.
We still accept or reject what the assistant suggests.
I wouldnt hate it if the assistant also had a bit of a chatbot feature.
Or even a Slackbot into our style guide.
As part of my writing process, style questions come to mind.
Tangential thoughts, but help me get it done all the same.
My hack , for now, typing those questions into the document to get my answer roundabout.
It outperforms other checkers.
Now decisions go out to anyone creating content as an automated check.
Are you comfortable with them making the call in any fringe context that challenges your custom guideline?
Deciding what stays out of the writing assistant is as important as what goes in.
The style guide site as we know it today will change.Publishing a site for style isnt needed.
They may morph to richer, descriptive frameworks, knowledge sharing, and community.
Instead, we think about the relationship between it and the writing assistant.
you might debate whether basic competency is required as a user.
With technology, is style falling the way of spelling and handwriting?
What do we leave behind?
When tools evolve, the old mentalities and behaviors get exposed.
Older technologies make them easy to spot.
The same should be asked of style guides.
AI writing assistants free us up for more creative, strategic, and critical thinking.
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