I’ve blogged about what goes into a style sheet and what the author needs to do when they receive a style sheet from their editor, but as you, the author, are the expert here in the thing you’ve written – book, journal article, blog post, even! – perhaps you should be providing your editor with your own style sheet.
Here are three reasons it’s a most bodacious idea to do this.
1 It means you have to write a style sheet
You can’t send to your editor what you don’t have. So yes, this means a spot of work or, as it truly is, a spot of organisation and investment of the ‘stitch in time saves nine’ kind. It makes you think about your choices, which is why I say putting in this time is a great idea – and it should only take a few minutes to get the basics sorted out in your mind.
- Which variety of English are you intending to use – UK, US, Australian, Canadian, Indian, or maybe one of the many other Englishes?
- Are you using ‑ise or ‑ize spellings?
- How are you treating particular words or phrases that are important in your text – spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, italics, diacritics? (Case in point: do I want to write ‘stylesheet’ or ‘style sheet’?)
- Do you prefer double or single quotation marks?
- What about serial commas – are they your style, or are they not?
- What’s your heading system?
- Are you numbering sections?
- In histories, are you writing AD/BC or CE/BCE, or AH or something else?
- What referencing style are you using?
- What about all those other decisions you make as you write – are you making the same choice each time you encounter a thing?
- And if you’re writing for publication, how does that stack up against the publisher’s style guide? Do you need to contact the publisher and try to negotiate a variation from the house style, or will you amend your personal style?
Pro tip – unless you have strong reasons why the house style doesn’t work for you, pick your battles and abide by the house style even if it’s not what you would have chosen for yourself.
There’s no fixed format for a style sheet. Just jot down bullet points and if you can, group things together in themes – punctuation, numbers, spelling, organisation of the document – and end with a list of spellings (encompassing italics, diacritics, capitalisation and hyphenation). Having collections of decisions makes things easier, as you’ll see at 2b (no Hamlet jokes, please). Oh yeah, naming the file with your own name and the title of your book or article will help everyone!
2 It means you get to use a style sheet
So, what’s the payback?
It’s twofold.
2a You have a resource that helps you write consistently
This is the most immediate payback from drafting your own style sheet.
For example, are you working with transliterated languages? If so, are you rendering names and common words the same way each time? What’s your stance on diacritics?
What about mediaeval names? I’ve had to raise many an author question about how names are to be styled so as not to confuse the reader.
I’ve had text to edit where the same person’s name has been given in the contemporary, original language, then Latinised, and then anglicised – in the same paragraph!
I suspect there that the author was just writing down the name as it appeared in the source material at hand each time, and not giving a thought to what the reader was going to make of this.
We all self-edit our work before we send it to anyone else. Having your own style sheet at your side will make that a good deal easier.
If you’re relying on self-editing, a style sheet gains in importance and what it can do for you.
Finally, if you take a break from the writing, when you come back to it you can use your style sheet to help pick it up again smoothly. It’s very easy to see in a manuscript when the author’s taken a break of a few days!
2b You get to review your decisions easily
When you have a short document with your decisions set out, and maybe a list of spellings, you can see far more readily what those decisions are without having to read through the text trying to spot things and getting just a bit lost, confused and overwhelmed.
When you are well advanced in your writing, you can take a look at the earlier decisions and consider whether they were the right ones. Do they work throughout the way you intended they should?
Do you need to change your mind about anything? Do you need to add things?
If you don’t know which way to jump for certain decisions, you can certainly kick that particular can down the road, but be aware that one of two things will happen. Your copyeditor will be in your inbox, demanding an answer – or your copyeditor will make a decision for you (so cross your fingers you’re happy with the outcome).
So it’s better you think about this now, while everything’s fresh in your mind.
If this seems like a sensible idea to you, you might want to check out a couple of other articles on my blog – on cutting down author queries (with downloadables!) and on self-editing.
3 You get to improve the edit with your style sheet
I have never yet had it happen, but I live in hope – and this article is just one small step to getting this idea out there. One day, an author is going to say to me, ‘Oh, here, have this style sheet I jotted down. It might help you.’ That author is going to find themselves a brand new fan!
A copyeditor working on a text that’s going to be published uses as their starting point for all questions of style the publisher’s style guide (the house style). Then they’ll look at your text and see what conforms, and what doesn’t, and do some analysis to see what sorts of decisions they’re going to have to make.
Some of those decisions they’ll just go ahead and implement. Almost certainly they’ll be absolutely fine, if you have an experienced copyeditor. But the publisher may well tell you that you can’t challenge the copyeditor’s style choices. You’re stuck with them, no matter what.
Some of those decisions, on the other hand, will come back to you in the form of author queries. That’s more work for you, weeks, months, occasionally years after you were heavily involved in the text.
Pass your handy-dandy style sheet to your copyeditor, though, and your copyeditor is far more likely to make the necessary changes to ensure consistency* throughout. Further, they’ll have fewer questions for you. Win–win!
* Publishers adore consistency – remarks about hobgoblins would be misplaced. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s oft-quoted jibe refers to ‘foolish’ consistency and he wasn’t even talking about writing!
Bonus tip
Once you’ve worked out your style preferences, save the basic style sheet as a template (or at least a document) that you can reuse, so you’re not constantly reinventing the wheel. At the least you’ll have a list of headings to jog your thought process next time.
If you repeatedly send your writing to the same publisher, or the same journal, do check their house style against your personal preferences. House style will hold sway, but you can do a version of your style sheet for this publisher or that journal, and again, you’ve got yourself added efficiencies.
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