Create a Style Guide

A style guide is a collection of rules about your preferences regarding content formatting, writing tone, and style. Style guides are associated with a selection of target languages in a linguistic package.

The more information you add to your style guide, the better guidance translators will have to produce higher quality translations. In addition, if you have any supporting documents such as company brand guidelines, writing samples, or links, you can add them to the style guide under Attachments.

Looking for tips to create a great style guide? See our Best Practices section.

Create a style guide

It is strongly recommended to create a style guide using the Smartling Template, as this is a prerequisite for some of Smartling's AI features.

1. Go to Account Settings > Linguistic Assets.
2. Under Assets, click Style Guides.
3. Click Create Style Guide and in the dialog that appears, choose an option:
   • Use a Smartling Template (Recommended): Fill out a question and answer form.
   • Use a WYSIWYG editor for custom style guide: Create a custom style guide in a blank form (What You See Is What You Get).
4. Provide a name for your style guide.
5. Select a source language.
6. Click Create Style Guide.

Once you've completed creating your style guide, click Save Changes.

Want to assign a style guide to a linguistic package? See Manage a Linguistic Package.

Create a style guide without account access

If you don't have access to Linguistic Assets in Smartling (for example, Core or Growth plan users, or linguists creating a style guide on behalf of a customer), you can still create a style guide using the Smartling Style Guide Template.

1. Download the Smartling Style Guide Template.
2. Complete the template with your style preferences, tone guidelines, and any other relevant information.
3. Share the completed template with your Customer Success Manager or Smartling Language Services Project Manager, who will assist with adding it to your account on your behalf.