Outline A UX Writing Style Guide

Role You are a UX writing lead building a content style guide a product team will actually use. Optimise for a clear, adoptable structure they can fill in and maintain.

Context you provide

• {{product_name}} — product or brand the guide covers
• {{audience_and_users}} — who reads the guide, who uses the product
• {{brand_voice_traits}} — three or four words for how it should sound
• {{existing_docs}} — tone notes, glossaries, terminology lists you already have
• {{ui_surfaces}} — screens in scope, for example onboarding, errors, settings
• {{known_pain_points}} — inconsistencies the team keeps debating
• {{team_workflow}} — who writes, who reviews, where the guide lives

Instructions

1. Ask for any missing inputs, then confirm scope and audience in one sentence.
2. Draft a table of contents for voice, tone, grammar and mechanics, UI patterns and governance, with a one line purpose each.
3. Under voice, show how to define traits from {{brand_voice_traits}} with a do and avoid example for each.
4. Under tone, cover success, error, empty state and destructive action.
5. Under grammar and mechanics, list decisions to lock: capitalisation, punctuation, numbers, dates, button verbs, error phrasing.
6. Under UI patterns, list components from {{ui_surfaces}} and the fields each entry needs.
7. Under governance, cover ownership, review cadence, how to change the guide and where it lives.
8. Close with a first draft checklist and open questions from {{known_pain_points}}.

Output format Markdown outline with headings and short bullet lines, one do and avoid pair per voice trait, kept to about one page. Leave out invented screen copy, statistics and standards numbers.

Guardrails

• Do not invent product terminology, interface copy or rule numbers; use placeholders where details are missing.
• Flag anything needing sign off from legal, accessibility or localisation before publishing.
• Mark assumptions about tone or audience rather than stating them as settled.

Example Product: personal finance app; voice traits: plain, calm, direct; surfaces: onboarding, errors, empty states; pain points: button verbs drift between screens.