You're stylin' now: there's no need to reinvent the wheel when you follow an established style guide, but do make it your own

Communication World, Sept-Oct, 2006 by Sue Khodarahmi

Everyone has style. Whether your tastes run toward jeans and vintage rock-and-roll T-shirts or Armani suits and Manolo Blahnik high heels, you've probably put some time into figuring out what works for you. At home, too, you've likely created your own personal look--comfy sofas and overstuffed chairs, perhaps, or sleek, modern furnishings in chrome and black leather. Your personal style tells visitors a lot about who you are.

The same is true of your publication. Having a consistent editorial style gives your readers a clue about who you are and what your mission is. It can also make your job easier. While not every reader will notice that you put periods in U.S. on one page and you didn't on another, those who do will have the same reaction as if you had on one brown shoe and one black: sloppy.

By the book

"Because I said so" isn't usually the best answer when someone challenges you on your publication's style. Back yourself up by having a "higher authority" in the form of an established style guide. Chances are, if you already have a house style, you use either The Associated Press Stylebook or The Chicago Manual of Style as your base; generally, newspapers use the AP Stylebook, and books and magazines use Chicago. There are others: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, the American Medical Association's AMA Style, the American Psychological Association's APA Style, the MLA (Modern Language Association) Handbook, WiredStyle (from Wired magazine), and so on. Your own industry may have a guide too. You may have a style guide (or guides) on your shelf, or you can subscribe to one online, allowing you to look up terms on the fly and make notes for future reference.

With so many style guides available, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel. But you'll likely have a few terms that you want to present in a certain way. Make a cheat sheet to highlight any exceptions to your chosen style guide. For example, maybe your company wants healthcare to be spelled as one word, or you want to use the two-letter postal abbreviations for states and provinces. Fine. Write it down so that others have this same information. In fact, you can include anything that will help make your job easier. Many years ago I worked for a trade magazine geared to fitness professionals, and our in-house style guide included a list of the generic names for various pieces of exercise equipment--stair climber instead of StairMaster[R], for example--a handy reference for people who were dealing with these products every day and who often used the trademarked term out of habit.

If you mandate the use of a particular style guide, even your own, you should also choose a "house dictionary." Dictionaries are all the same, you say? Not true, especially when it comes to whether a term is one word or two or hyphenated. Tell your writers and editors which dictionary you use, and if you can, make sure there are plenty of copies available in your office. It's probably obvious, but relying on spell check is not a good idea.

Write your own

Still, I'm fascinated by the number of people who say their publication follows one or another style guide--and then come up with so many exceptions to some of the most basic "rules" that they probably would have been better off writing their own from the get-go. (One company I worked with insisted on the AP Stylebook--except that the company's editors preferred to use the serial comma, to spell out all numbers up to 99, to use % as opposed to percent, and to write dates in the mm/dd/yy format, as well as some other quirks, none of which followed AP.) If that's the case, then by all means, write your own. Consider addressing some of these typical style points:

* Do you want numbers to be spelled out? From one to nine, or from one to ninety-nine? How about with million or billion--2 billion or two billion?

* Do you want to abbreviate anything? Like state names or months? Do you prefer putting periods in abbreviations like U.S. or U.N., or not?

* Speaking of months, how do you want to treat dates? Sept. 30, 2006, or September 30, 2006, or 30 September 2006, or 9/30/06?

* What about phone numbers? In May, the AP Stylebook updated its treatment of phone numbers so that they use hyphens, not parentheses: 415-555-1234, as opposed to (415) 555-1234. But maybe you'd prefer to use periods instead.

* Do you want to use percent or %?

* Web terms can be a can of worms. When referring to a URL, do you want to include http:// or just start the address with www? If you have to split a URL from one line to another, do you want to do it before or after a period?

* Do you ever use footnotes or endnotes? Which?

Really, there's no right or wrong, as long as you're consistent. Either way, make sure that the rest of your team--writers, editors, marketing professionals and so on--know that you have a house style, and where to find it. The company intranet is an ideal place to post a PDF of your cheat sheet, or you can e-mail it to everyone whenever you update it. Style evolves--witness the updates to the AP Stylebook that if you're an online subscriber you receive periodically--and I guarantee you will want to update your own at least once a year. If you work with freelance writers, editors and proofreaders, make sure they know what style you follow. Otherwise, you'll find yourself redoing the work you've paid them to do.