ACHIEVING CONSISTENCY:
THE ROLE OF A HOUSE
STYLE AND STYLE SHEETS
Introduction: Why a style
guide?
Publishing houses’ style guides establish house
rules for language usage, such as spelling, italics,
hyphenation
and
punctuation.
Imposing
consistency throughout texts is the major purpose
of these style guides. They are rule books for
writers, ensuring consistent language usage.
Whereas authors are asked or required to use a
style guide in preparing their works for publication,
many don’t, or don’t do so consistently, as they
tend to preoccupy themselves with the content; so
you as the copy-editor will be charged specifically
with enforcing the publishing house’s preferred
style.
The four pillars on which really competent copyediting is founded are completeness, coherence
and clarity, correctness, and consistency. It is the
fourth of these that creates the need for a style
guide, because no matter how good you as the
copy-editor or subeditor are in fixing the grammar
and ensuring that the author’s meaning is
expressed clearly and succinctly, if you cannot
maintain consistency of spelling, capitalisation,
use of italics, hyphenation, or in the treatment of
numbers, for example, then you will have failed in
a patently obvious way.
Consistency is a sine qua non (or non-negotiable
requirement) in the copy-editor’s arsenal.
Perceived or actual inconsistency in a book’s
accuracy and presentation may have only a
subliminal effect on a reader, but it is strange how
the two merge: a few inconsistent capitals in the
text and the reader will wonder whether the facts
are also wrong.
If two different styles of capping ‘Minister’ are
employed, readers may think a subtle distinction
is being conveyed. They then get caught between
the lower inconsistency and the higher
consistency, and the author gets the blame.
only in their specific context, and a style decision
is necessary. In English, however, it is customary
to anglicise foreign names and titles. This style
guide pertains only to English language editing –
other languages necessarily follow different rules
on style.
Consider how many readers – or, worse still,
reviewers – react to a book in which they find
dates rendered as 3 June 2009 and October 7,
2010; or in which they find Jayne suddenly
morphing into Jane. ‘It’s so shoddily edited,’ they
usually complain. Which is probably only partly
true, but the book and its author’s reputations
suffer as a result. The same is true of magazines:
any periodical that’s worth its salt will pay serious
attention to matters of house style.
Noticing variations may still draw readers’ and
reviewers’ attention from the text, ever so slightly,
and these distractions can mount up. Remember
that the pass rate for editors is very high: every
error we let slip through counts against us, so
even if you can’t resolve a matter yourself,
communicate the query to another member of the
publishing team.
What is house style?
Whatever the language in which a book is written,
there will always be finer points on which more
than one variant is permissible. For example:
Hyphenation,
one word or two:
Italicisation of
‘foreign’ words:
Numbers: words
or numerals?
Decimals:
An astute editor will also watch out for commonname alternatives such as Ann or Anne, McIntosh
or Macintosh, or in history books about Germany
Frederic/Frederick/Friedrich. In Switzerland the
Germans spell the town Basel, the French use
Bâle and the English Basle: all are correct, but
well being,
well-being or wellbeing;
copyediting, copy-editing or
copy editing?
coup d’état, but coup de main;
ersatz and zeitgeist but
Sehenswürdigkeit; and should
legkotla and chakalaka be
italic or roman type?
one to nine, but 10, 21, 46,
125, 1 000?
decimal comma or decimal
point?
Ideally, decisions on these ‘ground rules’ need
be made by you or the publisher up front, prior
starting the copy-editing or subediting. But
reality you are likely to start with only a handful
to
to
in
of
guidelines and will then have to consult reference
works in an ad hoc manner as you work through
the text.
Whatever decisions you take in supplementing
house style, you must record them somewhere if
they are to be applied consistently across an
entire manuscript (don’t rely on memory, whatever
you do!). That ‘somewhere’ is known as a style
sheet, which should be applied to a specific
publication. It could even be a notebook together
with the page and line number for easy reference
(eg when Jane de Wet (p 4) becomes Jane de Wit
(p 28). And, naturally, style sheets are not static
things; they grow organically with each new
edition of a book or each subsequent issue of a
magazine.
Wherever you have to make choices on points
of style, you will first need guidance and
secondly need to record your decisions. The
points in a text on which you will possibly have to
make house style decisions include:
spellings
hyphenation
quotations and quotation marks
commas
order of punctuation at the end of quotations and
around a close parenthesis
full points/stops
numbers
possessives
bold
dash (en-rule or em-rule)
italics
lists
thousands
elision of numbers
abbreviations/contractions
dates
decimals
cross-references
capitalisation, especially in headings
style of figure and table heads/captions
style of note indicators in tables and text
references and bibliographies.
What house style is not
What, then, is house style not? It must not be
confused with either of the following equally
important aspects of book and magazine
production:
Author’s style of writing: this can range from
formal and/or stilted to anecdotal/informal,
stream of consciousness or historical narrative,
but this has nothing to do with house style,
which is much more the concern of the editor
seeking to impose a consistency of treatment of
the items listed above throughout the author’s
text.
Design elements such as paragraph style
(blocked or indented), list style (numbered or
bulleted), type style (sans serif (eg Arial) or serif
(eg Times Roman)) or style for quotations (either
intext or displayed). These are all typographical
and design decisions taken by a book designer.
The copy-editor simply implements them.
What contributes to a style
guide?
Your starting point needs to be the publisher’s
preferred dictionary and, if they have one, an upto-date house style manual that sets out their
inhouse style requirements. (If they don’t have
one, standardise on your preferred UK/SA English
dictionary.)
For the sake of completeness or the voice of
authority, add to these two resources any of the
many style guides available, including:
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The Economist Style Guide
The Guardian Style Book
New Hart’s Rules
New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and
Editors
Collins Dictionary for Writers and Editors
Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words
The Oxford Manual of Style
MHRA Style Guide. Academic style for the
arts and humanities published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association;
based in the United Kingdom
Independent Newspaper Group’s manual of
style
heads/captions
Government Communications Editorial
Style
Guide
http://www.gcis.gov.za/
resource_centre/guidelines/styleguide/
editorial_styleguide_2011.pdf
Handbook on referencing and other matters
(Centre for Information Literacy, UCT)
South African Law Journal Guide to Authors
ACS Style Guide. Style for scientific papers
published in journals of the American
Chemical Society
American Medical Association Manual of
Style. Style for medical papers published in
journals
of
the
American
Medical
Association
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American Sociological Association Style
Guide. Academic style for the social
sciences by the American Sociological
Association.
APA style. Academic style for the social
sciences by the American Psychological
Association
The Chicago Manual of Style. Style
required by some academic publishers for
books and journal publications
MLA Style Manual and MLA Handbook for
Writers of Research Papers. Academic
style for the arts and humanities by the
Modern Language Association of America
Scientific Style and Format: The CSE
Manual for Authors, Editors and Publishers,
7th edition. Style for scientific papers
published by the Council of Science Editors
(CSE), a group formerly known as the
Council of Biology Editors (CBE)
The New York Times Manual of Style and
Usage.
The first group above tends to follow British
English; the second follows American English. In
South Africa, unless our publisher insists
otherwise, we tend to follow the British English
because of our close links to it.
Next in line in the armoury of reference books
should be specialised dictionaries or word lists
that cover the vocabulary of specialist areas:
medicine, law, geology, archaeology, psychology,
geosciences, environmentalism, art, electronics,
engineering,
physics,
chemistry,
avionics,
transport, banking. The list is, of course, endless.
Tap into these, whether paper-based or online, to
check established or standard usage before you
make style decisions.
One of the worst things an editor can do is to
impose either their own preferences or some
general convention on particular disciplines or
subject areas, because, in essence, they’re
interfering with the ‘code language’ the members
of that discipline or area regard as akin to a
mother tongue. Tell a medical person, for
instance, that ‘micro-organism’ must be spelt thus
and not ‘microorganism’ and they might turn
apoplectic. Or tell an economist that ‘bears’ and
‘bulls’ need not only elucidation but also quotation
marks simply because you’re unfamiliar with the
terms and you’ll only be exposing your own crass
ignorance.
In other words, try to tap into jargon wherever you
need to, but at the same time you should ask
yourself whether the targeted readership will
understand it. If you can answer ‘yes’, leave it
intact; if not, do what’s necessary as copy-editor
to ensure that the uninitiated readership will find
the terminology accessible.
What is a style sheet and
how is it different from a
style guide?
What follows below are two examples of style
sheets to introduce the concept and the
discussion that follows (figures 1A and 1B).
These sample style sheets illustrate the two basic
ways in which you can record the decisions made
for a specific manuscript:
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in alphabetised cells in a table (Figure 1A;
this is a style sheet in the process of
compilation), or
under meaningful headings (Figure 1B; this
is a completed style sheet),
whichever suits the project and/or you. Each has
its merits, though one may lend itself better to a
particular publication.
Set them up as MS Word documents and
populate them as you work through a manuscript
– possibly amending them as you change your
mind about earlier decisions as it becomes
apparent were perhaps misguided or misinformed.
You should then submit the style sheet together
with the edited manuscript to your contact at the
publisher so that your decisions accompany the
text throughout the production process.
Style sheet decisions: Book ABC
A
B
C
and, not &
D
E
decimal
comma, not
en-rule
point
dash = emrule
between
number
ranges: 49–
51
F
G
H
I
J/K
L
M
N
O
P/Q
Mussolini
no-one, not
em-rule
no one
for dash,
Numbers: 1–
spaced
9 = words
S
T
U
V
R
W
well-being
X
Temp:
velocity, not
16 ºC
speed
Y
Z
zeitgeist (lc,
roman)
Figure 1A Style sheet organised in alphabetised cells
Other
House style and consistency: Book XYZ
Capital letters
Hyphenation/one word
First World
abovementioned
Third World
co-operation/co-ordinate
Parliament (singular/specific)
common-law requirement
the High Court decision
e-commerce, but email
focusing/focused
in so far/inasmuch
judgment (of court)
multi-media
online/offline
policymaker
pro-active
radiocommunication
roleplayer
worldwide
Lowercase
Dates
due diligence (report)
12 May 1865
the court decided
1994-–99 (en rule; elided)
southern Africa
parliaments (plural/general)
Nomenclature: use only as appropriate Lists
enterprise/business
company/partnership/corporation
Footnote numbers
the sentence
after a colon:
first item;
second item;
third item, and
final item
Quotation marks
follow end punctuation at the end of
.8 or
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9
singles; doubles inside singles
the word ‘convergence’ means
... it states that ‘the term
“electronic communication” is ...’
Words giving difficulty
Punctuation
social vs societal
No stops with acronyms and
abbreviations: ie, eg. ISNs, viz,
telecommunication vs
telecommunications
enquiry (question) vs inquiry (official)
as regards/regarding/with regard to
consist of/comprise
ECT Act
‘or’ is preferable to ‘/’ to show
alternatives:
‘local or domestic markets’ not
local/domestic markets’
Words giving difficulty
Punctuation
in terms of: avoid if possible
A, B, C, etc (comma before ‘etc’)
Impersonal voice
Numbers
No place to ‘I’, ‘We’ in legal writing:
1–9 in words
use third person singular instead ‘it’:
10+ in numerals
It is customary to ...
No need to give both words and
The law on this point is ...
figures, as in a legal document
The chapter examines ... (Not: ‘I
shall examine ... I this chapter’)
Figure 1B Style sheet organised under logical headings
As stated above, when a consistency/house style
query arises, you should first consult the client’s
house style manual (or style guide, next their
preferred dictionary and then any specific word
lists pertaining to the subject-matter – in this
order.
The style sheet must accompany the manuscript
and the page proofs on their journey through
production. One reason for this is that much of the
book’s structure and content is retained in the
copy-editor’s short-term memory, and if they work
on an MS in concentrated periods they might
remember the oddest things about spellings and
italics; but wait a week and it all disappears (and if
they do retain it at all, that way lies madness!). So
it will pay you to keep fuller notes than you would
expect to be necessary – and the style sheet’s the
pace to do so.
A second reason for the style sheet’s taking this
journey is that another proofreader, or the author
or even the publisher (or commissioning editor),
may spot apparent inconsistencies, and will need
to know the decision you took and where you
have deviated from it (frailty, thy name is ...).
Sometimes the typesetter finds it useful to see this
record of the editorial decisions too, to confirm
and fix errors as they spot them.
And even the indexer, right towards the end of the
process, may need to consult the style sheet
when they detect what seem to be spelling,
hyphenation or capitalisation inconsistencies.
This is what makes this ‘bible’ for each book such
an indispensable tool.
How – and why – do we
maintain house style?
Now on to the practicalities. Assume you’re now
reading through the MS, pencil (or red pen) in
hand. Because of the amount of detail you have to
cope with, you’ve quickly learned to be proactive
in this area, and you spot, say, ‘no one’ spelt as
two words. Circle it in pencil at this point (an easyto-erase aide-memoire to return to). Perhaps stick
a Post-it note or add a paper clip to this page to
speed things up should you need to find the
marked word again. Electronically, insert a
Comment in the text. Later, you come across ‘noone’ and the alarm bells begin to ring ...
‘Hmm, didn’t I spot it as two words earlier?’ you
ask yourself.
Yes you did and you found at that point the day
before that the dictionary gave both spellings as
acceptable, and you opted for two words. Now,
you know how to mark the second occurrence,
don’t you?
But say the process had worked differently. You’d
retrace your steps and change the first occurrence
to ‘no-one’, note it in the style sheet, and then
mark all further occurrences to be consistent with
that later decision. That’s all part and parcel of the
editorial process. Being consistent yet openminded and flexible.
Or you might even find that by far the majority of
occurrences are ‘no one’ (two words). As long as
the style guide or the dictionary says it’s
acceptable, go with the majority – it’ll make your
job a whole lot easier and more profitable,
remember, and your client happier too.
Now, whereas the decision to display a long
quotation by indenting it from the left, inserting a
blank line and below it, and setting it one point
size smaller than the body text is a design one,
the decision to insert it between single rather than
double quotation marks (or inverted commas), or
without any quotation marks, is a house style
one. So is the decision where to place the final
punctuation of the quoted text in relation to the
close quotation marks.
Consult the house style manual to ascertain the
publisher’s preference, and follow that. If there’s
no guidance, make your own decision based on
the available resources – and adhere to it
consistently. Ironically, you’re much more likely to
be judged on whether you followed a house style
decision consistently than on which decision you
made – if only because inconsistencies are so
much more visible!
References:
John Linnegar, Paul Schamberger & Jill Bishop Consistency, consistency, consistency: The PEG Guide
to Style Guides (PEG, 2009)
Carol Fisher Saller The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (Chicago University Press, 2009)
Judith Butcher, Caroline Drake & Maureen Leech Butcher’s Copy Editing: The Cambridge Handbook
for Editors, Copy-editors and Proofreaders (Cambridge University Press, 4 ed 2009)