What is a style guide?

If you send me a request for copy-editing or proofreading, one of the questions I will ask you before starting the project is whether you can provide me with a style guide. The term might conjure up images of a magazine article on how to look chic in this season’s fashion trends. As you might have guessed though, when we talk about style in an editing or publishing context, we aren’t referring to sartorial flare (although having consistent style will help your text to look more classy and elegant). A style guide is a set of guidelines stipulating how particular elements of the text are to be presented. It covers matters such as spelling, punctuation, numbers and dates, capitalisation and how lists are formatted.

The benefits of having consistent style are probably self-evident, especially if you have ever been irritated whilst reading poorly edited copy that has a mishmash of different spellings, punctuation styles and formatting. A text that is consistently presented is clearer, more comprehensible and altogether a more pleasant reading experience.

A harmonious style also looks more professional, and for this reason it is helpful for any company, large or small, to establish a “house style” for its written communications. This could take the form of a simple list covering some key decisions such as whether US or British English is to be used, how numbers and dates are treated, and how key company terms should be spelled, capitalised and hyphenated. I mentioned looking classy above, which is perhaps why the following example has come to mind: imagine a brochure for Fortnum & Mason where half of the mentions of the company name were written with an ampersand (the correct styling) and the other half with the word “and”. It would certainly undermine the impression of prestige that the company wants to convey.

It isn’t just me, your freelance editor, who will be grateful for these guidelines – anyone involved in writing any sort of copy, whether for marketing or internal use, will be glad to have some rules to follow. It’s nice to have a document that tells you, definitively, “this is how it’s done”, so that you don’t have to waste time thinking about it, and can spend more time thinking about what you are going to buy at Fortnum and& Mason.

If you are an academic, you will likely be following the style guidelines specified by your university, or by the relevant journal or publisher. These may instruct you to refer to one of the major style volumes such as Oxford or the Chicago Manual of Style. These are comprehensive works covering almost any question that might arise about how to style and format text – no detail is too arcane for these venerable tomes!

But what to do if you don’t (yet) have a style guide? You can create one by reviewing existing documentation and establishing the styles that you tend to use already, and then putting these into a document. You can also choose to base your house style on one of the aforementioned classic reference works.

Alternatively, if you don’t fancy wrangling with questions such as “should there be a full point after ‘Dr’?”, you can hand the task over to a professional. Such questions are my bread and butter, and I will happily compile a style sheet for you or your company – just ask.