When you define a writing style for your organization or group—"this is how we write SOPs"—AI organization will arrange SOPs according to that writing style's phrasing and granularity. This feature helps you align SOPs that tend to vary by author or department to your organization's standards.

Writing style is not something you set once and forget. Decisions in pre-publish checks and rejections in approvals are recorded, and from that, your writing style grows every day. See "Grow it from the records on site" below for how it develops.

This "writing style" appears in the [Authoring rules] tab of Dictionary / Templates, alongside the rules file (What to follow) and export format (Which form to export in). Formerly called "Procedure Authoring Policy."

Available to Enterprise plan customers.

What is writing style?

A documented rule for how to write SOPs, set at the group level. It consists of three parts:

• Phrasing / Writing style: Rules for text and granularity, such as formal vs. casual tone, one action per step, or in-house terminology
• Prohibitions: Expressions or phrasings you want to avoid
• Common phrasing: Phrases frequently used in-house. Automatically extracted from sample procedures and editable

Your defined writing style is used as a standard for AI organization and pre-publish checks.

Setting up your writing style

1. From the group management screen, open the "How to write SOPs" panel for the target group (you can also open it from Dictionary / Templates > [Authoring rules] > [How to write it])
2. Enter "Phrasing / Writing style," "Prohibitions," and "Common phrasing" respectively (you can also use the auto-generation from samples described below)
3. Click [Save]

Auto-generate writing style from samples

If writing it all out seems like a lot of work, you can have AI generate your writing style from sample SOPs or manual files.

1. In the "Sample procedures" section, click [Add sample]
2. Choose how to add:
   • From file: PDFs, images of existing manuals, etc.
   • From Dive procedure: Select an already-created in-house SOP
3. After registering the sample, click [Generate a writing style from the samples], and AI creates drafts for "Phrasing / Writing style," "Prohibitions," and "Common phrasing"
4. Review the generated results and edit as needed before saving

Reflecting writing style in AI organization

In AI processing options (video, file, photo) or in the "Text style" option available when editing an SOP, teams that have a writing style set can select [How to write it] (when organizing multiple steps at once and doing "Proofread with generative AI," it shows [Follow the writing style]). Selecting this makes AI organization arrange each step according to the phrasing and granularity defined in your writing style.

Pre-publish check (check the SOP being edited)

From the [More] menu to the right of [Publish] in the SOP editing screen, open [Pre-publish check]. You can check the SOP being edited along seven dimensions. Because only the dimensions you open are checked, you can review just what you want to see:

• What is decided: Displays the purpose, readers, type, and scope decided in "AI consultation before you build"
• Rules: Compares against registered rules by reading the original text page by page, pointing out discrepancies with source (rule name and page) and quotations
• How to write it: Compares each step against your writing style
• Export format: Checks whether the format fits the current content and whether anything would drop if exported in that format
• Storage folder: Shows folders with many similar SOPs
• Reason for publishing and summary: Generates a draft of the reason and summary you enter when requesting publication
• Tags: Points out missing tags

If you decided on content during "AI consultation before you build" before creating the SOP, the check determines compliance based on the difference from what you decided. If you did not create that record, it guesses based on the SOP's content. The screen shows which method is being used.

Use this for reviewing finished SOPs or quality-checking SOPs created by other authors.

Import from rules

If your organization has a rules file, you can read from it. Open [Dictionary / Templates] > [Authoring rules] > [Rules file]. You can read PDF, Word, and Excel files. You can register not only rules that define how to write SOPs, but also rules that define the work itself, such as quality manuals or safety and health regulations.

1. Add your rules file to "Rules file" with [Add file]. You can add related files together
2. Under "SOP types," click [Extract from N rules files]. The export format, required fields, and granularity for each SOP type are listed
3. Check the content and click [Save] to confirm. File additions and removals do not take effect until you press [Save]

If phrasing or prohibitions are found in the rules, before saving, the system asks "What do you want to do with the wording rules?" If you choose [Import into "How to write it"], it is added to your writing style. It only adds; existing entries are not overwritten. If you choose [Confirm without importing], those rules are not saved.

When you have multiple rules files, you can use [Analyze] under "Conflicts between rules" to list conflicts in a way that makes the rules mutually incompatible, with sources. You can decide each one with [Use this one], but you can also start using them without deciding. When writing SOPs, you can choose on the spot.

The rules you read are used as a basis for organization before creating SOPs and for pre-publish check judgments. For detailed procedures, see Read in-house rules to be the basis for SOP decisions (Rules).

Grow it from the records on site

From daily records—whether corrections in pre-publish checks are marked as done or not applicable, or reasons for rejection in approvals—you can create update proposals for both your writing style and the rules reading. Updates happen once a day automatically on the server side. Records are kept only within that team; the AI model itself is not trained or retrained.

By continuing your normal workflow of creating, reviewing, and publishing SOPs, your writing style evolves closer to the field. You do not need to set aside time to review your writing style.

You set this in management settings under "Grow it from the records on site." The owner chooses only one:

• Update automatically (default): Generated update proposals go directly into your writing style and rules reading
• Do not update automatically (only offer proposals): Neither is updated automatically; proposals accumulate. You can see the content and decide whether to adopt them

Only "adding" updates are automatic. Adding lines to your writing style, adding required fields from rules, or reviewing granularity are automatic, but removing required fields and rewriting existing writing style lines always require human judgment (if changes make checks less strict, they may go unnoticed even if wrong). Automatic additions are logged in update history with their reason and can be rolled back. You can also create update proposals on the spot from [Generate proposals] in the writing style panel.

For groups without a writing style yet, an initial version is created from published SOPs and registered rules.

View update history and restore previous content

Open "Update history" in the writing style panel to see a line for each change: when it was made, who made it, and what changed. From [Details] on each line, you can see the content at that point and restore that version.

• Manual save: Saved by a person. The saver's name is shown
• Auto-generated: From daily automatic updates. The updater is shown as "System"
• Restore: A restore to an earlier version
• Starting point: The content before history was recorded. Choose this if you want to roll back to before automatic updates began

Sample procedures are also subject to history and restore. Restoring rolls back the writing style and samples from that save point together.

Rules have the same update history. For rules, the rules file is also rolled back together.

Tips for success

• Try starting small with one group, and once your workflow is running, roll out to other groups
• For "Sample procedures," choose SOPs your organization considers ideal
• The generated writing style is a draft only. Edit it to match your actual situation before saving

Related

• To import content from existing manuals, see AI extract from related files and reflect in your SOP
• To align notation variations in terminology, see Unify notation variations (Notation Unification Dictionary)