This week, the “Content Audits and Inventories” chapter on selecting and defining audit criteria delighted me the most. I appreciated that the chapter was broken down into the four criteria, which were then further explained in their own subsections. The author lists the four main criteria as those that measure business purpose and value, those that measure user value, those that have to do with content presentation, and those focused on usability and interaction. Each criterion was briefly and plainly defined, but the consistency criterion made me pause and think. Consistency is something I focus on at work, especially when it comes to proposals, engineering reports, and litigation reports. Proposals are mostly done by just me, but my subject matter experts/engineers often collaborate on reports. My most frequent note to them is something my mom — a writer in a similar line of work as me — has drilled into me since about the time I could hold a pencil: pick and stick. Whether it’s the format of a date (04/01/2026 or April 1, 2026), health care of healthcare, or A.M. or a.m., pick one format and stick with it throughout your piece of writing. Pick and stick. With formats and style aligned throughout, it’s not extremely obvious that the document changed hands several times before it was sent to the client or customer. Of course there’s nothing wrong with collaboration, but I think it’s important to show our audience that our staff is all on the same page and we care about what we’ve produced for them. Even the slightest style differences in one text or a set of texts can signal inconsistency, leading to reduced credibility.

To me, the style is the easy part. With some coaching for your technical staff and a keen editor’s eye yourself, you can create a stylistically consistent document. What I stopped to think about during my reading of the chapter is the tone piece, especially when it comes to representing the “personality” of a company. Many firms, including my own, describe their firm’s/brand’s personality in internal brand and messaging guides, but I struggle to actually execute portraying that personality in my writing. How do I write professionally in a way that anthropomorphizes my corporation as confident but not arrogant? Or cool yet professional? I would love to learn how to do this well. Right now, I write for work with a professional, not overly formal or stuffy tone, but I can’t tell you where my personality ends and the firm’s personality begins!

Through this class, I would love to learn how to do a better job of tailoring my tone to build consistency that matches brand identity. I am excited for the opportunity to work with our client, learn their brand identity and personality, and try to tailor my editing/auditing to match that identity and tone. This is an aspect of my career I’ve never been able to wrap my head around, so I’m excited to challenge myself in the support of a learning environment. I’m also excited to see how my classmates, professor, and even the client interpret writing for a consistent personality/brand identity.