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Creating an Editorial Style Sheet

by

Dragonfly Editorial

Setting editorial style for a large corporation might sound like a dream job for some copyeditors. Aligning all points of style with your own personal preferences! Throwing away incomplete and outdated style sheets! Dictating style to thousands upon thousands of loyal followers!

Needless to say, it doesnt work like that. Even if youre given the authority to set editorial style, theres no guarantee that your colleagues will like your choices. If youre lucky, theyll tell you in detail what they despise. If youre unlucky, theyll ignore you and your standards altogether. In seven years of setting and revising editorial style for CSC, a Fortune 200 consulting behemoth (formerly Computer Sciences Corporation), I learned that you dont always get your way just because youre appointed style guru. But I found that you can mostly get your wayand develop a sensible style in the processif you listen to your line copyeditors, pay attention to your subject matter experts, and are willing to compromise on editorial issues that arent near and dear to your heart. Crafting a style that incorporates others opinions builds support for the style when you need itwhen the time comes to fight toe-to-toe over a critical point of editorial style. In the meantime, cut down on those fights by following a few simple rules. Listen to your copyeditors Why listen to line copyeditors when making style decisions? Arent you the one whos in charge of the style guide? Maybe so, but the folks who are slogging through your publications word by word, day after day, are often more familiar than you with the eccentricities of corporate copy. They know the guidelines that are missing from your style guide. They know where your style advice sounds good on paper but causes problems or inconsistencies when applied to real-life text. And they can often come up with simple solutions to style quandaries. Heres an example: CSCs guideline for the treatment of help desk seemed simple: Use initial caps when referring to a specific help desk; use lowercase letters when referring to help desks generally. Over time, however, a seething resentment developed toward this rule. Copyeditors complained that in dense proposal text, it was often difficult to tell whether authors were writing about a proper help desk or CSCs help desk services in general; they pointed out that time was often wasted as various editors took the term down then put it back up. Worse, our authors considered our varying treatments of the words inconsistent at best and schizophrenic at worstcertainly unprofessional. I could have stood staunchly by the rule; it was logical and perfectly clear on paper. But I didnt. I changed the guideline to call for capitalizing help desk on all occurrences. An elegant solution? Not exactly. But it saved time, reduced frustration, and showed our copyeditors that the style guide was there to make their work easier, not more exasperating. Reach out to your subject matter experts Editors can sometimes forget that actual human beings wrote the text they are reviewing. Admittedly, when faced with turgid corporate copy, its easy to assume that authors may not care about the quality of it, but they are as sensitive as any other writer to criticism. It pays to remember that our authors are subject matter experts. One sunny afternoon at CSC, a marketing brochure about the companys Hydra Expert Assessment Technology came in for copyediting. In the text, the product name was shortened to H.E.A.T. Because CSCs style (and just about every other style) calls for setting acronyms without periods, our editors pulled the periods and sent back the copy. The authors reinserted them. We pulled them again. This exchange could and probably would have continued indefinitely had I not called the product owner, who directed me to CSCs corporate counsel, who explained politely that another company already owned the mark HEAT, sans periods. To avoid violating trademark law, CSC needed to call its product H.E.A.T. With periods. Case closed. The lesson? Sometimes authors write strangely for a reason. Its our job as editors to find out that reason and, if its a good one, to change our style accordingly. Style, as a set of good decisions about clear presentation, should first and last serve the message. When its important, buckle down and fight Youve listened to your production staff and authors. Youve incorporated their best ideas and built up some goodwill. Then a style proposal comes along so hideous that you feel a line has been drawn in the sand. Your job? To step over the line and start fighting. My big fight was over the serial comma. So small, so insignificant, yet so eminently necessary. At least in my opinion. My adversary believed that the serial comma was superfluous in advertising copy. I argued that CSCs ad copy was highly technical and demanded a serial comma for clarity. She countered that CSC would be left behind by the competition if it were used. I reminded her that most of our customers probably didnt even know what it was, let alone use it to determine their buying decisions. But using it could make our messages clearer on a quick reading. As our department director weighed our arguments, I bit at my tongue. My opponent glared and rubbed her knuckles. I did my best to keep from muttering, Banish, foul demon, as we waited. In the end, without obscenities or fists flying, the serial comma won out. It didnt hurt that my opponent left the company a few months later, and the last impetus to eliminate the serial comma left with her. I like to think that common sense won the battlecommon sense backed by a solid editorial style guide. But having compromised on lesser editorial issues along the way didnt hurt my position. Try taking a stand on the most important style decisions instead of always imposing your personal preferences. When a consequential guideline is at stake, make a strong case, stifle oaths of frustration, and trust to a reasonable outcome. It just might happen.

Samantha Enslen runs Dragonfly Editorial, an editing and

copywriting firm

that specializes in proposals, corporate communications,

medical editing

, and

scientific

and technical publications.

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Creating an Editorial Style Sheet