Editorial Style Guide

Introduction

Rare’s Editorial Style Guide is a resource for Rare staff when creating external-facing content. It provides direction on tone, style, grammar, punctuation, word usage, and more. See Rare’s Brand Guide for visual style guidance.

Why do we need a style guide?

Language is power(ful). It is foundational to building a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world. It enhances our empathy, clarity, and understanding of each other as complex individuals with intersectional and varied identities and experiences.

How Rare presents itself matters. Our language, words, grammar, tone, visuals, etc., reflect who we are as an organization. Together, they help us establish a unique and united identity, communicate consistent (and on-brand) content and messaging, build and maintain credibility and trust with our audiences and partners, and make a memorable and lasting impression. An Editorial Style Guide is essential for guiding us to maintain our brand and identity.

What to expect from this guide?

This style guide will help us:

  • Create more precise, compelling, and effective messages.
  • Ensure our writing reflects Rare’s attitudes and values.
  • Reduce reputational risk to Rare, our funders, and partners.
  • Save staff time spent on copy-editing and revising.
  • Think critically about our language and use inclusive and respectful language.
  • Create a cohesive voice across multiple authors.
  • Increase awareness of Rare’s work.
What else should I know?

This Guide is a living document. MarComm will continue to update it to reflect evolutions in language, grammar, and Rare’s efforts and commitments to reflecting DEI principles in our work.

Questions, comments, or feedback? Email Larissa Hotra at lhotra@rare.org.

Rare Tone

Our editorial tone reflects Rare’s personality and attitude — toward our work, the communities we serve, our funders, and our world. Rare’s tone is confident, knowledgeable, informative, hopeful, bold, optimistic, authentic, inspirational, and transformative.

Confident: Changing our behavior is the most critical thing we can do to ensure human well-being and nature’s survival.

Knowledgeable: Protecting nature is about people — our choices and behaviors toward the planet.

Informative: A revolution in the science of human behavior over the past few decades has changed how we think about how people make decisions.

Hopeful: Our vision is simple: a world where communities have the right tools, knowledge, resources, and networks to safeguard and restore our shared waters, lands, and climate.

Bold: Rare drives social change for people and nature.

Optimistic: When fishers and farmers have the tools to manage their resources, the future they want is more attainable.

Inspirational: Rare believes in people and in the power of community to ignite change and drive action. Rare’s communities can achieve amazing things when we identify and break down barriers to action.

Transformative: For nearly 50 years, across 60 countries, we have inspired millions of people and their communities to shift their behaviors and practices to protect our shared planet.

Pro Tip #1:

Regularly read and reread your writing to assess whether it conveys these tones and elicits emotion. A tool like Grammarly will automatically analyze your tone.

Pro Tip #2:

Rare’s Origin Story is an excellent example of language that reflects our tone, showcasing our origins of optimism, out-of-the-box thinking, and desire to inspire change.

Rare Style

Whereas our tone reflects Rare’s personality, our editorial style reflects how we approach our audiences. Our style is direct, engaging/personable, creative, accessible, and authentic. We want to creatively and thoughtfully present our information, arguments, and stories to inspire an intended audience.

Note: Rare’s Marketing & Communications team follows the AP Stylebook. We sometimes use specific language and styles to reflect our targeted audience (e.g., our scholarly publications may follow relevant academic style guides).

Direct

Rare believes in people and in the power of community to ignite change and drive action.

E.g.:

  • Keep language simple and concise to highlight our message: Avoid clichés, idioms, jargon, vagueness, and complex language that people outside of Rare won’t understand (e.g., MA+R, OECMs, SDGs, etc.).
  • Acknowledge complexity but strive for straightforward language when describing our work: While Rare’s work around the world requires a healthy (and often complex) mix of science (behavioral, social, ecological, and biological), policy, community engagement, and financing, we should strive to make it as understandable to a layperson as possible.
  • Use as few words as possible to express an idea; make every word count and remove unnecessary text.
  • Stay what you need to say, then stop writing: let the strength of our arguments shine.

Engaging / Personable

We want everyone — government officials, farmers, fishers, funders, and inspired Americans — to feel they can participate in creating a world where people and nature thrive.

E.g.:

  • Use illustrative and visual language to keep the content accessible; Don’t alienate (or bore) readers with jargon and acronyms.
  • Use language that reflects Rare: straightforward, optimistic, and informative; Don’t dwell on the negative or hyperbolic.
  • Communicate about people, not ‘the planet,’ focusing on what matters to people —their homes, families, livelihoods, communities, favorite forests, beaches or animals.
  • Start with a story (whenever possible!) and regularly use real stories and examples throughout your communications; Use stats judiciously and strategically (use them to supplement a point, not be the main point), and accompany them with a visual if/when possible.

Creative

Rare’s creativity is in our genes. From our first Pride campaign to now, Rare creatively seeks to engage with our core audiences, connect with them on a deeper level, expand our follower base, and differentiate our brand from others in the conservation space.

E.g.:

  • Compelling, well-told stories communicate Rare’s brand more effectively than facts, figures, or lengthy explanatory text.
  • Make efforts to highlight critical points through first-person narrative or powerful true stories using captivating video, audio, text, and photos.

Accessible

Rare’s new resource outlines principles for effective and inviting climate communication. These principles are easily digestible, yet specific enough to improve the effectiveness of what you’re trying to convey.

E.g.:

  • Use plain language to clarify your message and avoid ambiguity. It benefits everybody. It also considers who the reader is and their needs (e.g., users with English as a second language or low literacy). Simple, clear, commonplace messages and terms, repeated often, overcome barriers of language and science speak.
  • Reduce barriers to comprehension (e.g., use alternative text for images so those who cannot see pictures grasp their meaning.)
  • Make captions or transcript text available for videos.
  • Identify critical contextual information.
  • Tell a story to make something understandable and engaging; try humor or satire, avoid relying on jargon and numbers.

Authentic

Rare’s approach is people-centered and community-led. Our programs seek to ensure that local communities and their leaders are at the center of conservation decision-making and management. Rare supports them to make and own decisions about their natural resources.

E.g.:

  • Use firsthand voices and visuals to show (not tell) how Rare works with local partners to ensure on-the-ground impact.
  • Write to align with Rare’s values, beliefs, and motives.
  • Support claims with unquestionable evidence.

The Importance of Audience

Within Rare’s brand “voice,” we can dial our brand personality attributes up or down to create copy and content that resonates with different audiences. Think of these attributes as volume controls. Our core audiences include HNWIs, foundations, governments, corporations, media, academia, NGOs, program stakeholders, and local communities.

The first step when creating messaging, copy, or content is to consider your audience’s needs so that you can shape effective, authentic communications that meet these needs.

Pro Tip:

Use one of the free writing tools in the Resources section or ask a colleague to check your writing for style and tone.

Rare Glossary

Rare’s Glossary is a live work-in-progress created in 2019 to support shared language for external communications. We envision it as a central place to house Rare’s most preferred, commonly used, or commonly searched-for definitions, concepts, and terms (120+ counting).

A few notes:

  1. DEI language: We are working continuously to integrate DEI-specific language into this glossary.
  2. Updates: Some terms may need to be updated. Please help us update it! We want this to be useful.
  3. Copy Library: For longer-form copy useful for concepts, proposals, collateral, etc., see MarComm’s Copy Library on the DAM.
  4. Contact: For feedback, suggested updates or inputs, questions, or concerns, please email Larissa at lhotra@rare.org.

Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage

Rare’s top grammar and usage preferences (following AP Style) are as follows:

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: Andrew sprinted to catch the train.

Bad: Andrew 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 often 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.

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 the word “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.

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

 

11. 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.‍

12. Spell out numbers one through nine.

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

13. 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.

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

It can make your writing less stilted and more accessible.

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

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

16. 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.

17. 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
18. Use American English, not British English.
  • Do: organization, analyze, labor, among, program
  • Don’t: organisation, anayse, labour, amongst, programme
19. Don’t italicize non-English words or put them in quotes.

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

20. Write dates numerically, not in words.

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

  • Do: May 5, 2023
  • Don’t: May 5th, 2023

Resources for Writing

There are many excellent free digital writing and editing tools available. Below, we list some of our favorite (and preferred) digital tools.

Online editing tools

 

Style manuals

 

DEI language resources

 

Other helpful writing resources

Related Content