Styling It Out
Using Style Guides.
The chances are, that if you look carefully enough, you will notice some inconsistencies.
The differences are small. For example, look at the use of possessive apostrophes for names ending in the letter S.
Do the they follow the traditional UK English rule of a single apostrophe, for example.
Warren Jones‘ car.
Or do they use the traditional American English convention of apostrophe S? e.g
Warren Jones‘s car.
Do they use an S or a Z in words like fantasise or fantasize?
Do verbs end in t or ed?
He leant against the table
He leaned against the table?
The chances are that you were taught some rules of grammar and punctuation at school that you have seen ‘broken’ by writers in your favourite books.
The most obvious ones can be chalked up to differences between UK English and American English. For example colour or color, but even in two books published in UK English, there maybe differences between books from different publishers.
This isn’t down to sloppy editing, rather the publishers have their own style guides. Essentially, these are manuals used by publishing houses to ensure consistency across their titles.
The English language is governed by a lot of small rules, but not all of these rules were written down. The language is a living, breathing construct, and has evolved organically over many decades, and with thousands of new words being coined every year, common usage isn’t always common!
When I was at school in the eighties, I was taught to enclose speech with double quotation marks (“) and if the person speaking quotes somebody else, to enclose the quotation with single (‘) quotation marks.
“She told me to ‘go away‘,“ said Warren.
I still follow that rule when writing. However, my copy editors change this to
‘She told me to “go away“,‘ said Warren.
This is because it is the HarperCollins preferred style.
Similarly, HC prefer ‘he leaned against the table’. However, other publishers prefer ‘he leant against the table’.
A few years ago, my original publisher was bought by HarperCollins. My first four books used the traditional UK rule for apostrophes after names ending in S. But when I received the copy edits for my first book written under HC, I was taken aback to realise that all the Instances of Jones‘ had been changed to Jones‘s. I queried this and they agreed to keep the original form so that my books are consistent.
These changes may seem small and inconsequential, and the job of the copy editor is to ‘correct’ these errors, but I am a bit of a pedant, and I like to hand in a manuscript that will require as few changes as possible – it’s easier for everyone. So I asked for a copy of the style guide. It has been really useful.
The document runs to several dozen pages and covers everything from preferred spellings (e.g. S or Z), when to use hyphens (–), en dashes (–) or em dashes (—) and ellipses (…), when to spell out numbers or write them as figures and how to write dates and times or units of measurement. There are also guidelines for when to italicise foreign words, titles of publications and place names, as well as how to abbreviate, for example, Professor can be written as Prof. or Prof (no full stop).
If you are writing for a publisher, then I recommend asking your editor for a copy of their style guide.
If you are self-publishing, or haven’t yet got a publisher in mind, I suggest searching the internet for a style guide and then sticking with it. It looks more professional. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong style, so pick one that you like, that suits the style of document (technical writing is different to fiction), and be consistent. Also, decide if you want to use UK or American English (or Australian or Canadian etc).
This Wikipedia page has a list of common style guides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_style_guides
English is an evolving language.
The style guide I use is a few years old. Therefore, it doesn’t cover everything, particularly more modern words and phrases.
So sometimes it is necessary to do a bit of research.
The Guardian and Observer newspaper have a useful online guide for quick reference.
https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a
Sometimes, finding a publication using the word or phrase you want to use in context can answer a quick query. Wikipedia can be useful, but bear in mind that many of the content editors are American. The BBC is also a good source, but take care – I’m sad to say that like many journalistic sources, they have cut back on their editors to save money, and early drafts of a story sometimes contain typos and other errors. As a basic rule, Google what you are looking for and then check several different sources.
Trademarks and Capitalisation.
My internet search history would baffle anyone who doesn’t know that I am a writer. In amongst the searches for technical details about decomposition of dead bodies, there are visits to McVitie’s’ home page (to look up the correct capitalisation of Jaffa Cakes) and the Wikipedia page for Pritt Stick to do the same. I always double-check names of businesses and trademarks – you’d be surprised just how many that you think you know are actually spelled or punctuated differently. Classic examples are the supermarkets. Tesco (not Tescos, despite most people I know adding the S when they say the word out loud) and Sainsbury‘s (note the apostrophe). Morrisons, doesn’t have an apostrophe.
Next week, I will continue this theme by looking at how to select the correct homonym, how to choose the correct wording for commonly misused phrases and list some resources for choosing when to use different spellings eg licence and license or practice and practise.
Do you have a preferred style guide?
Feel free to comment below.
Until next time, take care,
Paul
