Working with style sheets

A style sheet provided by an editor or proofreader can be a big help in producing a professional piece of writing. But what is a style sheet? Is it different from a style guide? And what value does it bring to an organisation?

​Editorial style and style guides

It’s valuable for an organisation to have its own editorial style – that is, a set of preferences about various elements of writing – and to have it documented in a style guide. I wrote about this in an earlier post: ‘Do you have a style guide?’

What’s the difference between a style guide and a style sheet?

​People often get these mixed up, but they do have distinct purposes. Roughly speaking, it goes like this:

• A style guide is prescriptive – it states how the organisation wants things to be done.
• A style sheet is descriptive – it documents how things have actually been done in a particular piece of work, such as a paper or report.

 
This doesn’t necessarily mean that a style sheet contradicts the relevant style guide. A style guide isn’t likely to cover every style choice that may crop up, so there are usually some that need to be decided during the editing or proofreading stage – these should be noted in a style sheet.
 
Sometimes, though, it may be sensible to follow the author’s preferences in certain elements of the writing, rather than rigidly sticking to every detail in the style guide. These deviations (which perhaps should be agreed with the client early on) also should be recorded in the style sheet.

​How will a style sheet help us?

Creating a style guide is a great way to start establishing consistency in your organisation’s written material, and helping to ensure that it projects the right image. But if the editors or proofreaders who work for you provide an effective style sheet for each piece of work, this will:

• help to ensure consistency in anything that the style guide doesn’t cover
• help you to hone your preferred style, defining it in more detail
• clarify the reasons for some of the changes the editor or proofreader has made (this, in turn, may prevent those changes being overridden without good reason).

 
Also, if your writing is copy-edited and later proofread by someone else, the copy-editor’s style sheet will guide the proofreader through the style decisions that they’ve made. This should prevent the proofreader undoing those decisions, which would complicate and slow down the overall process. Tip: Always pass on the copy-editor’s style sheet to the proofreader. (The proofreader might then either refine it or create a new one, but this is less essential than the copy-editor’s creation of the initial style sheet.)

​What’s in a style sheet?

Style sheets vary a great deal in structure and the types of content they include, but they typically at least have the following:

• Resources used – such as the applicable style guide, a dictionary or a commonly used style book.
• A number of themed sections or table entries for the kinds of issues that style guides usually cover: capitalisation, hyphenation, numbers and so on (see my other post, mentioned above, for a fuller list). These are for general preferences or ‘rules’ that are being followed in this piece of work, including any exceptions to the style guide.
• A ‘word list’, with specific choices in things like spelling, vocabulary, capitalisation, hyphenation and use of italics. It may also include names of people, places, institutions etc. that could easily be written wrongly or in different ways – for example, ‘Czechia’ rather than ‘the Czech Republic’.

 
Here’s a fictitious example, in the format that I normally use: Example_of_a_style_sheet.pdf

​Style sheets and repeat work

If a series of related documents or publications are being developed in sequence, it’s often a good idea to use the style sheet for each one as an input to the editing or proofreading of the next one. That way, in each project, style choices that have been made in earlier projects can be included in the style sheet and taken into account in the editing or proofreading work.

This means you’ll gradually build up a more comprehensive style sheet – which is actually developing into a kind of dynamic style guide, though it might only be suitable for that series of documents or publications.

At the same time, you could add these style choices to your actual style guide, helping it to become more and more useful in capturing your ‘house style’ and in ensuring consistency across all your written materials.

​Always ask for a style sheet

Whenever you discuss potential work with an editor, I recommend saying that you’ll want them to provide a style sheet. If they’ve had decent training, they’ll know what you mean and will be capable of doing this.

It also may be worth saying this when negotiating with a proofreader, though this depends on the proofreader’s exact role. If the material is going to be professionally copy-edited first, the copy-editor’s style sheet might be sufficient.
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Once you’ve received the completed work, it’s worth taking a good look at the style sheet to help you understand how the editor or proofreader has dealt with style issues. You can then revisit your style guide and think about whether it could do with some additions or changes – helping you to make your written materials even better in the future.