A UX content style guide is more than just a set of writing rules. It’s a product team’s shared playbook for how content should look, feel, and function across the entire user experience.
Unlike brand style guides – which usually focus on visual identity or marketing voice – UX content guides go deep into the product interface. That means they cover everything from punctuation and tone to how to write an error message or label a button.
And increasingly, UX style guides play an important role in how UX and design teams can iterate rapidly with artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The more you create content at scale, the more you need quality guardrails and rules found in style guides.
A strong content style guide typically covers:
In this piece, we’ll explore the key elements that make a UX content style guide work. You’ll see real-world examples, learn how to keep a guide useful over time, and get a glimpse into where things are headed like AI-integrated and machine-readable guidelines.
The goal? To make sure every bit of microcopy feels like it’s coming from the same product, no matter who wrote it.
Style guides are consistency engines. They help multiple contributors write in one cohesive voice, especially on cross-functional teams. That consistency builds trust with users, making your product feel more polished and reliable.
Style guides promote clarity by pushing teams to use plain language, avoid jargon, and standardize terminology. That makes content easier to understand, and easier to translate, too.
The best content style guides are built with input from across the organization: UX writers, designers, engineers, support, legal, and more. That kind of collaboration leads to stronger, more realistic guidelines, and makes teams more likely to actually use them.
Most modern content style guides cover a similar set of components:
This is where the personality of your product comes to life.
Take Mailchimp, for example. Their voice is defined as an “experienced and compassionate business partner.” They use dry humor, but they always stay clear and empathetic. Their tone guidance goes deeper, encouraging writers to adjust based on context and user emotion. An error message might sound calm and supportive, while a success screen could be more upbeat and celebratory.
Many guides now include voice charts or pyramids that visualize how tone flexes in different scenarios, anchored in one consistent voice. Google’s developer guide puts it simply: be “conversational, friendly, and respectful” without slipping into slang or over-familiarity.
This section handles the nuts and bolts: punctuation, capitalization, abbreviations, and sentence structure.
Most guides align with a standard like AP Style but tweak it for product needs. For example, Google’s Material Design guide follows AP rules, but uses sentence case for all UI text (e.g. “Save changes,” not “Save Changes”) and favors active voice for clarity.
Consistency in the small stuff matters. You don’t want one screen to say “OK, got it” and another to say “Okay, got it.” That kind of drift adds up and eliminates trust. If you don’t pay attention to that stuff, what else don’t you pay attention to? A good guide ensures polish by aligning grammar, formatting, and tone across the board.
This is where you get specific. Great guides document preferred terms especially for product features, functions, and system messages. For example:
Use “sign in”, not “log in”
Say “customer”, not “client”
Prefer “send” over “submit”
This section often includes inclusive language guidance, too. That means avoiding gendered words like “chairman,” skipping ableist phrases, and using respectful, bias-free language. And yes, singular “they” is totally valid here.
Modern design systems treat content like any other component, so your style guide should reflect that. That means guidance organized by UI element: buttons, form fields, tooltips, onboarding flows, error messages, and more.
For example:
IBM’s Carbon system puts it best: “The tone of error messages is economical and direct. Onboarding flows take more time, with full sentences and friendly explanations.” Same voice, different tone.
Some companies, like Intuit, go further and create full content design systems, complete with reusable message templates and examples that plug right into interfaces.
Style guides should include clear, practical tips for writing accessible content. That includes:
Guides should also account for localization – writing in a way that translates well. That means avoiding idioms, cultural references, or overly complex phrasing.
This is where tone guidance gets real. You’ll often find frameworks for writing empathetic error messages, helpful onboarding tips, celebratory success states, and legally sound (but still readable) policy language. The tone might shift, but the voice stays consistent.
One of the most important concepts in UX writing is knowing the difference between voice and tone. Your voice is the consistent personality behind your product, whether that’s confident, casual, supportive, or something else. Your tone changes depending on the situation.
A good style guide defines that voice and shows how tone shifts in context. For example, a success message might sound warm and celebratory. But an error message? That same voice should come through, just in a calmer, more direct tone. Mailchimp and IBM’s Carbon Design System both show great examples of how to make this work in practice.
Learn how to master voice and tone in UX writing
If you come from a content background, the phrase style guide might bring to mind old publishing standards like Strunk & White or the AP Stylebook. And if you’re on the design side, it probably makes you think of brand kits like logos, colors, fonts, and a few high-level voice notes tucked into a Figma file. But UX content style guides are a different beast altogether.
UX content guides zero in on the product experience. They deal with the words people actually interact with: the ones on buttons, in tooltips, in confirmation messages, and across screens.
Historically, product design systems focused almost entirely on visuals. That left UX writers scrambling to define their own rules or worse, to retroactively clean up inconsistencies after the fact.
Here are some key differences:
These suually outline visual identity and overarching messaging principles. They might say your voice is “friendly and professional” but won’t tell you how that translates in a security message.
These focus on grammar and mechanics. They’re great for blog posts or marketing copy, but they rarely address the nuances of interface writing.
As we’ve outlined, these are all about the product. They take brand voice and editorial rules and apply them directly to microcopy. That includes decisions like:
In other words, they bring the brand voice to life in the product through interaction.
The UK government offers a great case study. They maintain both:
For instance:
These aren’t just editorial preferences, they’re tied to the GOV.UK brand of being transparent, accessible, and public-serving. And they give every department a shared, actionable framework for writing in a way that reflects those values.
A UX content style guide translates brand principles into the reality of product copy, giving teams concrete, repeatable guidance for writing UI text that feels consistent and user-centered. So when a brand guide says, “We’re warm, direct, and helpful,” the UX content guide shows what that means:
In short: editorial guides are for publishing, brand guides are for positioning, and UX content style guides are for product experience.
Rules are helpful. Examples are essential, especially if you’re going to start training AI tools on style to help create content.
The best style guides are packed with sample copy: before/after rewrites, do/don’t columns, and real snippets from the product. For instance:
That first one is actionable, friendly, and positive. The second feels like a warning label.
Google’s Material Design and Mailchimp’s guides both do this well: offering real-world scenarios, microcopy templates, and fast tips like “Use active voice. Avoid passive voice.” (although passive voice has its uses). The more examples, the easier it is for teams to apply the rules.
A great guide is easy to find and even easier to use. That’s why more teams are publishing their guides as websites or searchable docs instead of static PDFs. Mailchimp’s guide is a great example, well-organized by section and totally searchable. GOV.UK’s style guide goes A–Z for quick lookups.
Some even include a “TL;DR” or quick reference section so busy teams can find answers fast. Smart structure and navigation turn a guide from a document into a tool people actually rely on.
Not every style guide will look the same. But the best ones combine strategic guidance (like voice and tone) with detailed, tactical rules. They give teams the philosophy and the playbook. That’s what turns writing guidance into real product consistency and better experiences for users.
Mailchimp’s classic voice and tone guidelines was ahead of its time. Instead of simply listing adjectives, it provided situation-specific advice that showed how tone should adapt based on user emotion.
Most modern guides agree on a few key rules for error content:
For example, Google’s Material Design guidelines recommend:
The second option is simpler, user-focused, and easier to act on.
Another common pattern: avoid unnecessary politeness. You don’t need to say “please” on a button or in an error message. A button labeled “Please upload file” is harder to read and less clear than one that just says “Upload file.”
Some guides even recommend limiting how often the interface says “sorry.” One thoughtful apology is enough, then move on to the solution.
Shopify’s Polaris content team makes some smart recommendations regarding situation guidance.
For onboarding, they recommend an encouraging, motivating tone. For milestone achievements, they suggest being warm and professional, acknowledging the work without throwing confetti.
Respect context. Don’t assume the user’s emotional state. Respond to the situation with empathy and precision.
Design systems and content style guides often get mentioned in the same breath, and for good reason. They both exist to bring consistency, scalability, and structure to product teams. But they serve different (and complementary) purposes.
A design system is a centralized library of reusable UI components, visual styles, interaction patterns, and usage guidelines. It helps designers and developers build consistent interfaces quickly and efficiently.
It typically includes:
Design systems are visual and structural. They answer the question: How does this product look and behave?
A content style guide focuses on how your product sounds and communicates. It defines your brand’s voice and tone, grammar rules, terminology, and content patterns for UI copy.
It includes:
Content style guides are linguistic and experiential. They answer the question: How does this product speak to users, and how does it make them feel?
The most effective teams don’t treat these as separate tools. They treat them as parts of the same system.
For example:
Or:
Together, they create a unified user experience. Visual consistency + content consistency = trust, clarity, and usability.
If your design system is how your product looks, your content style guide is how your product sounds. They’re two lenses on the same goal: a coherent, high-quality experience for users no matter where, when, or how they interact with your product.
Increasingly, content style guidance is being built into design systems (like IBM’s Carbon, Google’s Material Design, or Shopify’s Polaris). That’s the future: not separate silos, but integrated systems that treat language as a core design element.
This is especially important when training AI systems that can generate content at scale. As we point out in our piece on the future of content design, creating and maintaining quality guardrails are critical for producing content at scale. Otherwise, you’re left with a mess of content that isn’t usable at all.
Creating a UX content style guide is a team-wide effort that takes research, collaboration, and ongoing care. The best guides are living tools that evolve with your product, your team, and your users. Here’s how to build one that actually sticks and keeps delivering value over time.
Before you get into grammar rules or button text, zoom out. What does your product sound like? How should it feel to use? These questions are your foundation.
Many teams kick off this process with a workshop or card-sorting exercise, asking stakeholders to pick 3–5 traits that describe the product’s voice, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. That list becomes your north star.
Tip: Anchor your voice in your company’s mission. If inclusivity is a core value, your voice might be defined as “welcoming and never elitist.” This creates a values-aligned framework for how you write, not just what you write.
Unless your team is brand new, you’ve already got content in the wild. Start by auditing it. Look for patterns:
Use this as a baseline to spot what’s working and what’s not.
And don’t be afraid to borrow. Many teams start with public guides like Microsoft’s or Google’s and adapt them to fit their voice. Mailchimp’s guide has been adapted by countless teams. The UX community is generous: take advantage of the templates and examples out there.
Style guides work best when they’re co-created. Invite input from designers, PMs, support agents, legal, marketing, and anyone who touches content or fields content-related questions.
This not only builds a better guide (support teams, for instance, often surface edge cases you might miss), it also increases adoption. When people feel ownership, they’re more likely to use the guide and to speak up when something doesn’t make sense.
Make space for feedback early and often. Circulate drafts. Host reviews. And remember: the guide exists to support the team, not to police them.
Your guide should live where people already work. Notion, Confluence, Google Docs, or even embedded in Figma – it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s searchable, scannable, and accessible.
Structure matters, too. Use clear headings. Include a table of contents. Add real examples, snippets, and templates people can copy/paste. TL;DR summaries, checklists, and “quick tips” sections can help busy teams find what they need without wading through paragraphs. And skip the academic prose. Plain language wins, even inside the guide itself.
You don’t have to launch the entire thing at once. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. Start small. Roll out your voice and tone section. Then add rules for key components like buttons, error messages, or onboarding copy as you go. Treat it like a minimum viable guide and iterate based on real team needs.
Just make sure it stays alive. Schedule regular reviews every six months or alongside major releases. Encourage team members to suggest additions or updates. Some teams keep a dedicated Slack channel or feedback form for this purpose.
Give someone the role of content librarian, usually a lead content designer or UX writing manager. Their job is to keep the guide updated, manage feedback, and ensure it’s included in onboarding or team training.
That doesn’t mean every small update has to go through them. You want the guide to empower people, not slow them down. Reserve escalation for bigger decisions, like creating a new tone rule or updating product-wide terminology.
Some orgs form a content council to review updates together, especially if the guide spans multiple products or platforms.
A good style guide doesn’t just say what to do, it also says when it’s okay to break the rules. Maybe your product is usually formal, but you’ve built an Easter egg into a loading screen. Maybe a bit of slang makes a tooltip more delightful in a low-risk moment. That’s okay.
Guides work best when they’re thoughtful frameworks, not rigid rulebooks. Tell your team: “If breaking the rule better serves the user, break it but do it intentionally and consistently.”
Some teams link style rules directly in Figma files. Others use plugins or linters (like Vale) to flag copy that breaks a rule, think of it as spellcheck for your content style.
Even small things help: include links to the style guide in design templates, content briefs, and onboarding docs. The goal is to surface the guide where the work happens.
Once your guide is live, don’t just quietly post the link. Announce it. Treat it as a big deal, because it is. Send a note from leadership. Host a “lunch and learn.” Add it to onboarding for new hires.
And whenever you make meaningful updates, share those too. Let the team know why changes were made and how they can apply them. This keeps the guide top of mind, instead of buried in a folder somewhere.
Building a style guide forces your team to align. You’ll hash out questions like:
The final document is important but the shared understanding it creates might be even more valuable.
As content design matures, and as AI and Content Ops become standard in how teams work, style guides are evolving into something much more dynamic. Here’s what we’re seeing on the horizon:
Traditional style guides are written for humans. But as teams scale, automate, and localize content, there’s growing interest in making these guides machine-readable.
That means:
Style guides are increasingly shaped by and for AI too.
On the input side:
On the feedback side:
This two-way relationship creates a feedback loop: human decisions get scaled by machines, and machine insights prompt smarter human decisions.
In a mature Content Ops setup, the style guide is embedded directly into the workflow.
Imagine:
This is happening in platforms that integrate writing guidance with design systems or headless CMS environments. By integrating style directly into tools like Figma, Notion, Git-based docs, or custom CMS interfaces, you bring the guidance to where the work happens and not the other way around.
As AI enables more personalized experiences, style guides need to strike a tricky balance: flex for tone while keeping voice consistent.
An AI chatbot might use a warmer tone for a cheerful user and a calmer one for someone who’s frustrated. But both interactions still need to reflect the brand’s voice. That’s where context-aware tone frameworks come in. Instead of a single tone rule, future style guides might include conditional tone guidance:
The idea is to create branches of tone guidance for different moments while keeping the underlying personality the same. This helps AI deliver personalized content without drifting off-brand.
Some organizations are building full content design systems: libraries of reusable patterns, approved snippets, and structured rules that go beyond documentation.
In these systems:
This centralization means designers, engineers, and writers can all pull from the same source of truth—just like they do with typography or spacing.
Some teams are already using AI to generate examples, test new tone strategies, and propose updates. It doesn’t replace human judgment—but it adds a layer of data-informed insight to your writing process.
The future of UX content style guides is active, integrated, and collaborative. They’ll help humans write and help machines write like humans. They’ll support personalization at scale without sacrificing clarity. And they’ll be part of the tools we use every day, not something we have to dig around to find.
And as AI enters more content workflows, style guides are taking on a new role by helping machines sound more human.
But at their core, style guides will always be (actually) human. They’re how we choose to speak to our users. They reflect what we value. And they help us scale that care, so that even as our products grow more complex, our content stays clear, consistent, and kind.
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