This page supports a very common problem in corporate reporting.
Most organisations have a style guide. It defines capitalisation, terminology, how the organisation refers to itself, how the Board, management, data, years, titles, and defined terms should be treated. The intent is sound. Consistency builds credibility, especially in long, formal documents.
In practice, style guides often fail quietly.
Documents such as Annual Reports, IPO prospectuses, ESG reports, and bond documentation are written by many contributors across finance, legal, sustainability, investor relations, and external advisers. Everyone writes competently, but everyone writes slightly differently. The burden of fixing this usually falls into late stage reviews, manual checks, and time pressured judgement calls.
The resources on this page exist to make style rules explicit, usable, and enforceable, rather than aspirational.
All materials are free to download and reuse.
1. Style guide template (PDF)
This is a professional style guide template designed for use in serious corporate documents.
It sets out the categories of rules that organisations actually rely on, covering capitalisation, defined terms, collective nouns, naming conventions, and common consistency issues that arise in long reports.
This version is intentionally a template. It shows the structure of a real style guide before stylistic choices are locked down.
[Download the style guide template PDF]
2. Completed style guide (PDF)
This is the same template, filled in with a complete and coherent set of style decisions.
These are not presented as universal truths. They are a realistic example of how an organisation might choose to resolve common style questions. Disagreement is expected and encouraged, ideally over a coffee or a pint rather than in a comment thread at midnight before sign off.
This file exists to show what a fully specified, usable style guide actually looks like.
[Download the completed style guide PDF]
3. Style rules in structured JSON format
This file contains the same style rules expressed in a structured, machine readable format.
Each rule is explicit and unambiguous, which makes it suitable for automated checking across an entire document. This is what allows style compliance to move from manual scanning to systematic auditing.
This format is intended for experimentation with automation, document analysis, and AI assisted review workflows.
[Download the style rules JSON]
Provenance and intent
The structure and content of these materials are based on a real corporate style guide used in live document production. They were shared with the permission of Luminous, who allowed their underlying template to be adapted and published for this purpose.
This is not a theoretical exercise. It reflects how serious organisations actually define and apply house style, including the compromises and edge cases that only appear in real work.
What this page is for
This page is not about rewriting documents or replacing editorial judgement.
It is about making style rules explicit, reducing friction in late stage reviews, and providing a clear foundation for both human and automated checking.
A follow up post and supporting material on this site explain how these same rules can be enforced automatically against a full PDF document, without changing the underlying text.