A Guide to Style

I’ve been updating the house style guide for Arkbound Foundation, where I’m on the board of trustees, and for its publishing arm, Arkbound. This means I’ve been reading various style guides over the last few weeks. These are generally dry documents that detail the publisher’s preferred spelling, punctuation, layout, reference formatting and even grammar choices.

Almost every time I edit for a new corporate client, I have to read through their guide and make sure the style is applied consistently throughout all their publications. And I love it. I’m fascinated by these proclamations that can range from a single page to a book as thick as a bible.

The The and the The

The word “bible” is a good example of something you might find in a style guide. Some of them would insist that “bible” always gets an initial capital letter, others would say only when referring to a specific bible, such as the King James Bible. Another example is whether to capitalize the t in “the” in that last sentence: The King James Bible.

This gets us into the much debated territory of whether it should be The Beatles or the Beatles, especially, say proponents of the former, since The Beatles is a registered trademark. I always wonder if it’s then more correct to say that John Lennon was a The Beatle rather than state that he was a Beatle. The way around that, and more accurate, I’d say, would be: John Lennon was a member of The Beatles.

And that example brings me to words after colons. Should the first letter after the colon always get an initial capital? Some would say, yes; others, no; while others would say, only in titles.

Style Tomes

Not all publishers have their own house style guide. A lot of them follow one of the many established guides. Probably the most commonly used is the Chicago Manual of Style, which recommends “the Beatles” and even “the The” for the band of that name. CMoS, as it’s known, is now in its seventeenth (17th? 17^th?) edition and runs to more than a thousand (1,000?) pages, which is why it’s important for editors to sign up for the searchable online version. There’s no way you could remember every detail in there.

Other popular style guides are the APA Style, from the American Psychological Association, and mainly used by academics, as is the MLA Handbook, from the Modern Language Association, while the AP Stylebook, from the Associated Press is used mainly by journalists.

These are used for American English, and all the other Englishes have their own variety of guides. There’s the Canadian Style, the Australian Government Style Manual, the Australian Style Guide, while writers and editors working in UK English can choose from, among many others, Butcher’s Copy-editing (from Cambridge University Press) and New Hart’s Rules (published by Oxford University Press).

Which brings us neatly and inevitably to the Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma. This states that every item in a list gets a comma after it, except the last one which gets a period if it ends the sentence. That means a comma before the “and” that comes before that last item. So, if I was following a style guide that uses the Oxford comma, I would have used one in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. I didn’t, which tells you something about where I fall in these eternal debate.

At the risk of alienating half the WU community, I find it too prescriptive to use a comma every time and would prefer to use it only where the lack of a comma would cause confusion, although that means you have to be aware of moments when confusion could arise. A common example is the one about inviting the two strippers, JKF and Stalin, which could refer to four or two people. That could be cleared up by simple recasting to: inviting JFK, Stalin and the two strippers (unquestionably four people and no Oxford comma).

Another such issue is the comma before too. I, too, prefer not to use it because we wouldn’t pause every time before too when reading aloud or when speaking. In the case of the previous sentence, however, I think it works to add emphasis.

And, in both cases, I don’t object so much that I refuse to use it when the author or style guide demands it.

Another issue in UK English is whether to -ize or -ise words. Most people think organize, for example, is US English, but both organize and organise are correct in UK English. The style guide – or, more often, Microsoft Word – decides.

This is a Smart Heading

For many publications, particularly those using US English, I would have to change that previous sentence to: The style guide—or, more often, Microsoft Word—decides. This one uses m-dashes with no spaces either side, while I had originally used n-dashes with spaces either side. One dash takes up the space of the letter m on the page, while the other is smaller, taking up the size of an n.

Other issues that come up in style guides are numbers. Some use figures for all numbers up to 9, 10 or 12; others advise writing out all numbers up to ninety-nine. Then there’s hyphenation, or the lack of it: copy editing, copy-editing or copyediting. Headings: some Capitalize The First Letter Of Every Word, some Only the first word, and others, including Writer Unboxed, Uses Smart Capitals where Lowercase is Used for all Articles, Conjunctions, Prepositions and Forms of the Verb “to be.”

These are all useful for corporate and academic style guides, but what about self-publishing authors, which style guide should they use? They could choose one of the above or, since style is more about the appearance of the text and not about the “rules” of the language, they could make their own. The main reason for the existence of any style guide is to make sure the text is consistent throughout and throughout all publications. This is especially important for authors writing a series of books: the spelling, hyphenation, capitalization and punctuation should be the same in every book, and so it’s worth compiling your own style guide as you go along; although, if you decide to use an editor, the editor will do that for you and ensure consistency.

All this is fascinating to me, and some style guides can even be quite entertaining reads, such as the one from the Welsh government, where the author clearly has some pet peeves.

Please avoid using these words:
commit or pledge (we need to be more specific – we’re either doing something or we’re not);
deliver (pizzas, post and services are delivered – not abstract concepts like improvements or priorities);
tackling (unless it’s rugby, football or some other sport); going forward (it’s unlikely we are giving travel directions).

What are your style preferences? Do you follow a specific style guide when you’re writing? Have you created your own style guide?