How do you document your coding standards?

We use our code to document the standard. This along side with enforcement from the senior/lead engineers has worked great for us. The reason we don't maintain an actual document is because we've found that nobody reads it and it becomes outdated rather fast.

IMHO all it takes to prove the point is existing code that shows what the style/standard.

Travel light!

If you are developing in .NET. I would recommend using StyleCop to check your builds. I would also recommend using ReSharper and the StyleCop plugin.

With ReSharper and the StyleCop plugin you get red "squiggly" lines under code that is against the standard and a simple mouse over will explain why. No code reviews, no docs to maintian.

Using StyleCop in your build process will ensure that all code checked-in conforms to the standards.

The only effective way to publish a coding standard in my opinion is to integrate it in the ide used by the developers (eclipse or idea for example). So new code will follow the standards out of the box and old code may be reformatted using the ide.

Only few developer will read coding standards, fewer of them will use them afterwards...