Sunday, March 1, 2009

Ode to the Style Sheet

Something I've insisted on in the editorial process at Policy Perspectives is that each team work with a style sheet. So I thought I'd take a moment to explain what a style sheet is, why it's so useful in the editing process, and how to create and use one.

First, a style sheet is a summary of the author's preferences for anything that could be up for debate (is "childcare" one word, should you spell out "percent," and do you hyphenate "African-American"?). It is used by copyeditors to ensure consistency in a manuscript, and can also help with fact-checking in scholarly work, as an editor can quickly check all cited authors' names and works against the style sheet for correctness.

It's easy to create one. Just grab a blank sheet of paper, create a Word doc, or, if you're editing with a team, a Google doc, and start marking anything that crops up. I tend to be nit-picky about hyphens, so I'll include all words that are or could be hyphenated: trade-off, decisionmaker, 4-star center. I also put in bills and authors that are referenced, especially if they have tricky names, as well as terms that are capitalized (or not) in a way that seems unusual to me.

I'm a convert, and I hope everyone at the journal will become masters of the style sheet, so we can make Volume 16 the best yet!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm making my students at the law school put a style sheet together for the big paper I have them writing this semester. I like the idea because it puts an added emphasis on technique that I've noticed goes missing in their writing. And mine.