Style Guide Enforcement with Claude

Before opening Claude, collect the most important parts of your style guide:

1. List your preferred terminology (e.g., "user ID" not "username", "click" not "press")
2. List deprecated product/feature names to flag
3. Note your key style rules (active voice, Oxford comma, title casing rules)
4. Keep this list to one page of text — you don't need the entire manual

What you should see: A focused list of your most important rules — the ones you catch yourself enforcing repeatedly. Troubleshooting: If you don't have a formal style guide, start with your terminology list and your top 5 style preferences.

1. Log in to claude.ai
2. Click Projects in the left sidebar
3. Click New Project
4. Name it: "Documentation Style Reviewer" or your company name
5. Click Project Instructions and write your style guide context:

You are a documentation reviewer for [Company Name]. Your job is to review technical documentation for style guide compliance.

Our terminology rules:
- Use "user ID" not "username" or "user name"
- Use "click" not "press" or "select" (for button interactions)
- Use "navigate to" not "go to" for navigation instructions
- Use "[Product Name]" not "[old product name]" (deprecated)

Our style rules:
- Use active voice (flag passive voice constructions)
- Second person ("you") for instructions, not third person
- Oxford comma required
- Title case for H1 headings, sentence case for H2+

When reviewing a document, return:
1. A list of terminology violations with the incorrect term, location (quote the sentence), and the correct term
2. A list of style violations
3. An overall count of issues found

1. Click Save

What you should see: Your project with instructions saved, ready to use for document reviews.

1. In your Project, click Add Content
2. Paste your full terminology list or product glossary
3. Claude will reference this for every conversation in the project

What you should see: Your glossary appears as an uploaded reference in the project.

1. Open a new conversation in your project
2. Type: "Please review this documentation for style guide compliance:" then paste a document you know has some violations
3. Send the message

What you should see: A structured list of violations — something like:

Terminology violations found: 3
1. "username" → should be "user ID" (found in: "Enter your username in the login field")
2. "press the button" → should be "click the button" (found in: "Press the Submit button to continue")
...

Troubleshooting: If Claude returns too many minor issues, add "Focus only on violations that affect professional quality and reader comprehension — skip minor style preferences" to your instructions.

Create a repeatable process:

1. Finish your draft
2. Open your Documentation Style Reviewer project in Claude
3. Paste: "Review for style guide compliance:" + your document
4. Apply the flagged changes
5. Mark as ready for SME review

What you should see: A review workflow that takes 2-3 minutes instead of 20-30 minutes of manual scanning.