A style sheet is simply a brief summary of the editing choices you make as you work through a document. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. For a short document, a style sheet could be a single page containing information such as which spellings, capitalizations, numerals, acronyms, and terms you prefer, along with other items that occur frequently. The goal of the style sheet is just to ensure that if a choice comes up again later in the document, you don’t have to remember what you decided before.
For example, let’s say that in one section of a document the author writes website, and in another section, web site. Most readers won’t even notice, but an editor should. The same goes for differing formats of dates, inconsistent job titles, differing forms of names, and capitalization schemes in headings. Whenever you decide on a form, add it to your style sheet and keep it handy to refer to during subsequent passes.
The best style sheets evolve with your manuscript. You don’t need to decide ahead of time what categories should be on your style sheet. Instead, as you edit, whenever something occurs more than once, add it to your style sheet under a heading such as Names, Terminology, or Capitalization. If your manuscript contains acronyms, add both the full phrase and the acronym to the sheet. If you’re not sure what the author means, don’t add an entry to the style sheet, instead, add an editor’s query to the document and wait until you hear back from the author before deciding on the appropriate form.
New editors sometimes get carried away and end up creating an entire second manuscript for their style sheet. Don’t do this; it will make it harder to find the information you need when you want it. You only need to add information to your style sheet that you think you’ll need again later in the document. If you’re unsure, ask yourself: Do I think I’ll need this later in the document? If so, add it to your style sheet. If the answer is no, you may not need to add it. Minor edits such as changing a few commas around or rewriting an awkward sentence probably aren’t worth adding to the style sheet, and it will be easier to see those changes if they are still in the document itself via tracked changes or comments.
Try creating a basic style sheet as a simple exercise. Take a few pages of a draft and open a new document next to it. Go through the pages and look for any details that recur throughout. Look for names, repeated terms, headings, capitalization styles, dates, and different spellings of words. Add these to the new document. Now reread the pages, this time looking at the new document to check consistency. You might find it surprising how easy it is to miss something like a capitalization style or date format when several different forms appear in close proximity.
A style sheet is also very helpful when the manuscript gets closer to proofing. The proofreader can now refer to the style sheet and compare it to the page proofs, rather than opening up the original manuscript again to find each detail. This is especially useful for things like headings, captions, cross-references, front matter, and back matter, where inconsistencies can easily slip through the cracks. A style sheet isn’t meant to substitute for reading carefully, but it does provide a reference point for your careful reading and can help you keep the document consistent.
