Rare brand language & style guide | Rare

Be engaging and personable

• Use straightforward, relatable language that does not assume technical / sector-specific knowledge. Avoid clichés, idioms, jargon, vagueness, and complex language that people outside of Rare or our sector won’t understand (e.g., MA+R, OECMs, SDGs, etc.).
• Communicate about people, focusing on what matters most — their homes, families, livelihoods, communities, and cherished natural places.
• Appeal to Emotions: Rare’s work is ideally suited to human storytelling. We inspire our supporters to action by connecting with values such as pride, hope, joy, and responsibility.

Be inclusive

• Reduce barriers to comprehension. Make information accessible with captions, transcripts, and clear language.
• Identify critical contextual information. Don’t assume the audience understands the context of what you are communicating.
• Tell a story to make complex concepts understandable and engaging.

Be authentic

• Align messaging: Write to align with Rare’s values, beliefs, and motives.
• Start with a story: Use real stories and examples in your communications whenever possible.

Be bold

• Clearly state our goals and successes: Rare has a well-earned reputation for innovation and change. Our language can bring this to life.
• Give Rare credit: Allow Rare to be a leader. Do not sublimate Rare’s role or cede responsibility for our role in the work.

Use positive framing

• Emphasize progress and achievable outcomes while acknowledging challenges. Don’t dwell on the negative or hyperbolic.
• Highlight solutions and collaboration. Use inclusive language, such as “we” and “together” to invite partnership and shared responsibility.

Be creative

• Show (don’t tell): Use first-person voices and visuals to show how Rare works with local partners to ensure on-the-ground impact. Compelling, well-told stories communicate Rare’s brand more effectively than lists of facts, figures, or lengthy explanatory text.
• Use the best medium for the story you are telling: Use captivating video, audio, text, and photos to emphasize critical points through first-person narrative or powerful true stories.

Emphasize measurable outcomes

• Highlight Rare’s results and impact instead of just describing actions or processes. This demonstrates how Rare’s initiatives lead to tangible change.

Reinforce with data and visualizations

• Support claims with unquestionable evidence and pair storytelling with clear impact metrics.
• Accompany statistics with a visual if/when possible. Use charts, graphs, and other visualizations.

Represent the whole organization

• State our goals clearly: Rare’s reputation for innovation and change is well-earned.
• Make “Rare” the subject of your messages to connect programs in your audiences’ minds. E.g., “Rare conducted a study” not “X program conducted a study.”

Answer essential questions

• Use the “Five Ws” framework (who / what / where / when / why) to cover essential details.
• Emphasize ‘the why’: tie the specifics of your narrative to the organization’s larger mission and express the work’s impact as part of the whole.

Keep it simple

• Use simple, straightforward, and commonplace language to overcome barriers of language and science speak.
• Use as few words as possible to express an idea; make every word count and remove unnecessary text.

1. Use active voice, not passive voice.

In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Passive voice weakens the clarity of your writing.

• Active: Rare conducted a survey.
• Passive: A survey was conducted by Rare.

2. Avoid hyperbole and adverbs.

Adverbs add clutter and reduce clarity in your writing. Try taking them out and using a stronger verb. Tip: most adverbs end in “-ly,” e.g., “expertly,” “incredibly,” and “literally.” When you see an adverb, delete it and rewrite the sentence if needed.

• Good: Caleb sprinted to catch the train.
• Bad: Caleb ran really fast to catch the train.

3. Avoid idioms.

Idioms are figurative expressions, often unique to a particular cultural or language group. We avoid them because they lack precision, aren’t inclusive, are hard to translate, and are frequently overused.

Examples of (predominantly English) idioms include: down the pike, he has bigger fish to fry, hit the nail on the head, a perfect storm, kill two birds with one stone, hit the ground running, and on.

4. Oxford comma? Serial comma? Your choice.

Sometimes, ditching these commas gives a more rapid feel and better text flow. In other cases, they provide clarity — your choice.

5. Use dashes correctly.

Em dash vs. en dash vs. hyphen. Read here about the differences.

• —    This is an em dash. It’s the most versatile dash. It can replace a semicolon, or a pair can replace commas or parentheses to enhance readability. Insert a space before and after the em dash. The heads of Rare — including the President, CEO, and Talent Lead — agreed to provide Rare staff flexible Fridays.
• –    This is an en dash. I just finished chapters 2–7 of “The History of Rare.” It’s between a span of numbers.
• –    This is a hyphen. A compound modifier consists of two (or more!) words connected by a hyphen, which act together like one adjective. The general rule of thumb is that they need a hyphen(s) if they appear before the noun. If they appear after the noun, they do not. She works full time. She has a full-time job.

6. Use one space after a period (or other punctuation mark ending a sentence), not two.

7. Use U.S. or U.K. in text (with periods) and US or UK in headlines (without periods).

8. Use numerals when writing about money.

For cents or amounts of $1 million or more, spell the words cents, million, billion, trillion, etc. There is no need to include “dollar” as you already used the dollar symbol: $26.52, $100,200, $8 million, 6 cents.

9. Use quotation marks correctly.

Use around the titles of books, songs, television shows, plays, computer games, poems, lectures, speeches, and works of art. Taylor Swift sang “All Too Well” at the concert.

Do not italicize, underline, or use quotations around the names of magazines, newspapers, or books that are catalogs of reference materials.

10. Use ellipses to indicate that a quote has been condensed for clarity.

Include spaces on either side of the ellipsis, and do not add spaces between the dots. ”I use technology to engage my class … so they can participate in the digitally driven world.”

Note: Always include an editor’s note disclosing that quotes in an article or interview have been edited for clarity.

11. Spell out numbers one through nine.

Use numerals for numbers above 10.‍ Exceptions include peoples’ ages, addresses, and when starting a sentence.

12. Use “nearly” when you want to magnify an amount.

Nearly $1,000,000. Use “less than” to minimize the sum. Less than $1,000,000. A more neutral approach is “about.” About $1,000,000. Use “more than” not “over.” More than 130 million girls are out of school around the world. ”Amount” applies to things that cannot be counted.

13. Don’t be afraid to start sentences with “and” and “but.”

It can make your writing less stilted and more accessible.

14. Avoid jargon, acronyms, buzzwords, and overused words.

These can often become meaningless. E.g., MA+R, OECM, EbA, NbS, SDG.

If you need to use an acronym, spell it out in the first place, e.g., “Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECM).”

15. Use simple words over complex or technical ones and avoid word repetition.

Simple words, e.g., Use (don’t utilize). Avoid using the same work repetitively in a paragraph. Use a synonym or rewrite the sentence to avoid repetition.

16. Use capital letters sparingly.

Use lowercase when titling headlines of stories, articles, documents, etc. Headlines can capitalize the first word, proper names, or proper abbreviations, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Do not capitalize any word that’s three letters or less.

• Do: A funding overview of humanitarian assistance to education for Syrian refugees
• Don’t: A Funding Overview of Humanitarian Assistance to Education for Syrian Refugees

17. Use American English, not British English.

• Do: organization, analyze, labor, among, program
• Don’t: organisation, analyse, labour, amongst, programme

18. Don’t italicize non-English words or put them in quotes.

Italicizing or putting non-English words in quotes “otherizes” those languages and reinforces colonial practices of imposing English as the dominant language.

19. Write dates numerically, not in words.

Use the month/day/year format. Don’t use ordinal indicators after the date.

• Do: April 1, 2025
• Don’t: April 1^st, 2025