What the Editorial Style Guide Checker does
This checker compares a draft with a house style - preferred spellings and terms, words to avoid, UK or US spelling, number and date formats, the serial comma and heading capitalisation - and lists every place the draft departs from it, with a suggested replacement where there is one clear answer.
Start from the GOV.UK preset, which is built from the published GOV.UK A to Z style guide, or from an editable UK or US example, change any rule, and save the result as a JSON rule set your whole team can load. The draft is checked in your browser and never uploaded.
How to use it
- Paste the draft. Plain text and Markdown both work; Markdown headings (# and ##) are checked for capitalisation, and so are short standalone lines that look like headings.
- Choose a starting point under House style. The controls then show that preset's rules: spelling, dates, numbers, serial comma and headings.
- Open Preferred terms and words to avoid to add your organisation's vocabulary, one rule per line - for example
log in, login -> sign in. - Read the highlighted draft and the findings table. Safe fixes have one right answer; Check means the pattern may be a false alarm; Rewrite means the sentence needs rewording, not a word swap.
- Copy the corrected text, which has only the safe fixes applied, and download the rule set JSON so colleagues check against exactly the same rules.
Reading the results
Safe fixes are spelling pairs with a single meaning (organize to organise), date reformatting, number commas and preferred terms without a condition. They are applied to the corrected text.
Check findings are patterns that are usually, but not always, wrong: meter can be a measuring device in UK English, program is correct for software, a capitalised word may be a name such as Pearl Harbor, and a missing serial comma is found by a list pattern, not by grammar.
Rewrite findings are words to avoid, such as "deliver" or "leverage" in the GOV.UK list, and numbers that start a sentence. The table shows the plainer alternative the style guide suggests, but only you can reword the sentence.
Worked example: a council update checked against GOV.UK style
Load the council update. It has 15 findings on the GOV.UK preset. Seven have a safe fix: 2026-04-01 becomes 1 April 2026, April 14th, 2026 becomes 14 April 2026, organized becomes organised, e-mail becomes email, check box becomes checkbox, 12500 becomes 12,500 and 4 per cent becomes 4%.
Four are words to avoid - streamline, deliver, impact and i.e. - and each shows the alternative from the A to Z, such as "make, create or provide" for deliver. Two preferred terms carry a condition and are marked Check: click (use select) and fill out (UK English uses fill in). "Five working days" is flagged because GOV.UK writes every number except one as numerals.
The heading "Changes To Parking Permits" is flagged for sentence case, with the suggestion "Changes to parking permits". That makes 7 safe fixes + 4 words to avoid + 2 conditional terms + 1 number + 1 heading = 15.
What the GOV.UK preset covers
The GOV.UK A to Z has hundreds of entries, and many depend on meaning - a benefit name is capitalised, a generic team is not. The preset includes only the rules a pattern can check reliably: the list of words to avoid, UK spelling, numbers written as numerals with commas over 999, dates in the 4 June 2017 form, % instead of per cent, and "and" instead of an ampersand, plus preferred forms such as email, checkbox, username, adviser, block list and allow list.
The preset was checked against the live guide on the date shown on the page. Style guides change, so the page links to the source for anything you are unsure about.
Writing your own rule set
The JSON rule set has five switches (spelling, serialComma, numbers, dates, headings), an ize flag for Oxford-style -ize spelling with UK forms, a terms list of { "use": "sign in", "avoid": ["log in", "login"] } entries and a banned list of { "word": "synergy|synergies", "instead": "working together" } entries. Any file you load is validated first, and a clear message names the field that is wrong.
Limitations: what the result does not prove
- It matches patterns; it does not understand grammar. It cannot tell practise from practice or licence from license by meaning, so those are left alone or marked Check.
- Proper nouns are guessed: a word capitalised elsewhere in the body is kept in headings, and a capitalised spelling variant mid-sentence is marked Check rather than fixed.
- The spelling tables cover common UK and US differences and a fixed list of -ise/-ize words. Rare words and specialist vocabulary may not be flagged.
- Only English is supported, and only the style-guide rules listed on this page. Tone, clarity and structure need a human editor or the related plain-language and filler-word tools.
Privacy: where your data goes
Everything you paste, type or drop is processed in this browser tab. It is not uploaded, logged, stored or sent to analytics. Session recording and tag-manager scripts are switched off on this page.
Standards and sources
- GOV.UK style guide - checked 19 Sep 2026
- GOV.UK - Content design: writing for GOV.UK
- ISO 8601 - Date and time format
Frequently asked questions
How do I check a document against the GOV.UK style guide?
Paste the text and keep the GOV.UK preset selected. The findings cover the A to Z's words to avoid, UK spelling, numbers, dates, per cent, ampersands and preferred terms such as email and checkbox. Rules that depend on meaning, like which benefit names are capitalised, still need a human check.
Does this tool convert US spelling to UK spelling?
Yes, for words with a single correct counterpart. Choose UK spelling and the corrected text changes color to colour, organize to organise and traveled to travelled. Words with more than one meaning, such as meter or program, are listed for you to decide.
Is -ize spelling wrong in British English?
No. Both are British: many UK publishers and government sites use -ise, while Oxford University Press and some journals use -ize with otherwise British spelling. Choose "UK with -ize" for that style; it keeps colour and centre while changing organise to organize.
Can I share my house style with my team?
Yes. Download the rule set JSON and send it to colleagues, who load it by dropping the file on the page. It contains your rules only, never the text you checked.
Why is the serial comma marked Check and not fixed?
Whether "A, B and C" is a list depends on grammar the checker cannot see. It looks for short items separated by commas after a lead-in such as "such as" or "the", so it catches most lists, but it can occasionally flag a phrase that is not one.
What does the checker do with dates like 04/05/2026?
It flags them in every style, because 04/05/2026 is 4 May in the UK and 5 April in the US. Write the month as a word and the date checker can then convert it to your chosen format.
Does it replace the words GOV.UK says to avoid?
No. Words like deliver, leverage and impact need rewording, not a one-word swap, so they are highlighted with the alternatives the A to Z suggests and the exceptions it allows, such as deploy for software.
Last reviewed by the A2Z.Tools team against the sources listed above.
