An editor keeps a style sheet for every project. However, many people outside the editing world don’t recognize the power of this simple tool — or how they can use it themselves. Some people don’t even know what a style sheet is or that their editors use them. Today we’re going to demystify the style sheet and show why you might want to think about using one yourself.
The idea behind it is simple: an organized collection of notes about the document. (This is not the same thing as a style guide, although it can turn into that.) Depending on the document and the editor’s responsibilities, a style sheet may include:
- Specifications, from the client or the receiving publication (such as margins, font, type size, page/length limits, file format, print format, due dates, branding scheme, and any other requirements)
- A brief outline of the structure of the document
- The style guide used and any in-house style guidelines
- A list of common usages and spellings
- A list of acronyms and abbreviations
- A list of references
- Any other relevant notes or information.
This glorified list makes it easy to get a better hold on your project and make sure you’re consistent in your style and meeting your project’s requirements. Talk about stress reduction.
Even for very large projects, a style sheet is easy to maintain — and the larger the project, the more useful the style sheet becomes. (I once had a 40-page style sheet for a several-thousand-page project. It made my life infinitely easier.) Style sheets are also particularly useful for projects with a variety of different documents or outputs (blog posts, white papers, articles, reports, media blurbs, etc.). It’s so much easier to refer to a handy list at your elbow or on another screen than to search back through the document — or worse previous documents — to figure out what you’ve done before.
If you don’t already, you can easily create and keep a style sheet for yourself, whether or not you have an editor who will do it for you at a later stage. In the simplest sense, it is a list of all the things you need to keep track of in the document, and you can build it any way you want to meet your needs.
Always forget how to spell a certain word? What does that acronym stand for? What date did you need to remember? Is there a particular title this person or that department always goes by? Put it on the list!
Once you get your list started, you can group it under headings to keep things organized and easy to reference. Your style sheet doesn’t have to be as technical as an editor’s: whatever works for you is the name of the game. Common headings include:
- Specs and requirements
- Names, dates, places
- Common/particular usages (phrasing, spelling, capitalization, hyphenation)
- Acronyms and abbreviations and their definitions
- Resources and references
- Other notes and questions to yourself.
Keeping all these things in one place will make your writing better and will save you time, energy and most of all — stress! You will spend less time trying to remember what you did before, looking up information, or researching what you previously called something. (And you won’t spell that person’s name three different ways either! Writing without a style sheet can be dangerous….)
On top of that, your writing will be more clean and consistent, and clean, consistent writing makes you sound smarter and more trustworthy. Above all, you can spend more time focusing on the important parts of your writing — your composition and your argument — not the nitty gritty details.
If you have an editor, you could even surprise and impress them by giving them your list! (Don’t worry, you don’t have to if you’re afraid of their critical eye. You could just let them think you’re that good.)
If you don’t have an editor yet, then you at least know your manuscript is a little more fit for consumption than it otherwise would have been. (And we can help you take it from here!) In my opinion, the peace of mind is well worth the few minutes it takes to create your own version of this wonderfully easy tool.
Do you use a style sheet or something similar already? What are your thoughts? If you’re new to the idea and want to try it out, we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments!
