Developing an Editorial Style Guide for a National Philanthropy

The Wallace Foundation funds work across arts, education, and youth development — and produces a significant volume of content to match. Research reports, blog posts, grant communications, social media, and more flow from multiple teams and authors across the organization. With so many voices contributing, inconsistency in style and language was inevitable — and the communications team found itself catching and correcting the same issues before anything went out the door.

But the communications team didn’t want to flatten the distinct voices of the Foundation’s many experts. It wanted to give authors a shared editorial foundation that would amplify credibility without losing originality. Staff needed guidance they could trust: rules clear enough to follow, but flexible enough to leave room for their own voice to come through.

Wallace also maintains an organization-wide commitment to inclusive language. But without documented, organization-specific guidance, staff were left directionless and following trends instead of sound linguistic reasonin..  

 We created a resource that could answer editorial questions before they reached the communications team, reduce repetitive corrections, and reflect the care and intentionality Wallace already brings to its work.

Brevity & Wit built a 60-page Editorial Style Guide from scratch — designed as a practical desktop reference staff would return to again and again. We ensured it was searchable and answered common questions about inclusive language as well as more client-specific questions.

Discovery: Learning How Wallace Actually Works

We started by going directly to the people doing the writing. Through surveys across the teams producing Wallace’s communications, we gathered a firsthand picture of where authors felt confident, where they were guessing, and what questions they found themselves asking most often. From there, we brought those findings to the communications team — using the survey results as the foundation for a deeper conversation about what the guide needed to address and where the gaps were most acute. Rather than importing a generic framework, we built from what we learned: the specific inconsistencies already happening, the questions the communications team was fielding most often, and where inclusive language guidance was most urgently needed.

Building the Style Foundation

We developed a style section grounded in AP style with clearly documented Wallace exceptions: including Oxford comma usage, italics for titles, and em-dash conventions. These weren’t arbitrary choices; they were the specific issues generating inconsistency across the organization. By writing them down with rationale and examples, we gave every author a shared reference and gave the communications team something to point to.

The Inclusive Language Section

This was the guide’s most comprehensive section and covered seven distinct identity areas:

• Disability
• Socioeconomic status and class bias
• Age
• Immigration
• Race and ethnicity
• Gender and sexuality

Each area included key terms, guiding principles, concrete before-and-after examples, and curated external resources. Throughout, we maintained a consistent organizational disclaimer: Wallace’s guidance takes precedence, with the important exception of community self-identification.

Building a Structured Approach to Language Choice

A lot of style guidance around community-centered language boils down to a substitution list: don’t say this, say that instead. The Wallace team needed something more durable than that. We built a section that helped authors understand why certain word choices matter: what they signal, what assumptions they carry, and what impact they have on the communities Wallace works with and writes about. Grounded in asset-based framing, the approach gave staff a way to evaluate their own language choices rather than just swap out flagged terms. The goal was for authors to be able to write genuinely and specifically about the communities Wallace serves.

Principles teach you how to think, which means authors can make good decisions in situations the guide never anticipated — that allows this guide to be evergreen, assisting staff in thinking through language evolutions. 

Guiding Principles 

Two principles became the backbone of the entire guide. The first was clarity over concision. Instead of a vague direction to “write well,” this principle gave staff a memorable, actionable mandate they could apply to any piece of content they produced and a way to resolve their own judgment calls without escalating to the communications team.

The second was the consistent prioritization of how communities name and describe themselves. Across every section, we built in a clear principle: when community-preferred language exists, it takes precedence. The hallmark of inclusion is listening to other people, and this principle ensured that Wallace did not abandon the foundation of inclusion in favor of pedantry.  

Those two principles together gave the guide its coherence. One governs how Wallace writes. The other governs whose voice ultimately matters most.

Systematic Revision

After delivering the first draft, we collected detailed stakeholder feedback from staff across the organization. We sorted every comment into two categories: changes we could implement directly, and issues that needed discussion. We worked through both methodically, ensuring the final guide reflected real organizational input — not just our best guesses about what Wallace needed.

Wallace went from a vague need for a style guide to a genuinely practical resource.

A Centralized Reference 

The communications team now has a single document to point staff to when editorial questions come up.  It covers organizational identity, voice and tone, asset-based language, inclusive language, accessibility, grantee expectations, editorial review workflows, and AI guidance. It also has a way of effectively onboarding new employees. 

A Shared Foundation 

Every author at Wallace, regardless of role or team, now has access to the same voice and tone guidance, the same style rules, and the same inclusive language principles. That shared foundation guarantees a level of quality assurance  before anything reaches the communications team. The focus on principles allows Wallace to adjust its communications as language evolves.

Inclusive Language Guidance Staff Can Actually Use

The seven-section inclusive language chapter gives Wallace staff something most organizations don’t have: documented, organization-specific guidance on identity language that goes beyond a list of preferred terms. The before-and-after examples make abstract principles concrete, and the external resources point staff toward ongoing learning.

A Staff-Friendly Guide

The 60-page guide was built to function as a living desktop reference. The guide was organized for quick lookup, not cover-to-cover reading. We also encouraged the communications to make certain sections of the guide and assets (e.g., logos) available via their website for grantees.