The
importance of a style guide
Leapfrog’s
multi-award winning editorial consultant Louise Birkett reckons
the devil’s in the detail when it comes to publications –
especially ones that capture the hearts and minds of their readers,
and perhaps even win an award or two along the way.
Writing a publication
is easy, isn’t it? All you have to do is interview people,
write the stories, get them cleared, design it, get that cleared
and print it. And if you think it really is that easy, then Louise
says she’d like your job - please!
But producing
an award-winning publication demands all of the above – and
more. “People laugh at me when I say I know when I’m working
on an award-winner,” commented Louise. “But when you find
yourself with superb stories, pictures and design there’s a
tangible sense of achievement. The trick is not to let the detail
let you down.”
And that’s
where a style guide comes in. It’s fair to say that compiling
it will take some time and effort – but compared to the time
it will save you in sub editing or briefing new writers, it’s
a worthwhile investment.
Questions a
style guide can answer include whether job titles are capitalised
and how you refer to titles of publications, films or songs –
do you italicise them or put them in quotation marks?
What about quotation
marks? Do you want to use single or double quotes for direct speech?
What about large numbers, do you want to write out £10 million,
£10,000,000 or just say £10m?
Bullet points also need the style guide treatment. There’s
nothing wrong with any of the following examples – provided
one style is used throughout the publication:
- My bullet
points look like this,
- My bullet
points look like this;
- My bullet
points look like this
- my bullet
points look like this,
- my bullet
points look like this;
- my bullet
points look like this
Regardless of
upper or lower casing, or punctuation throughout the list, the last
bullet point should always end in a full stop.
The differences are tiny, but in some competitions the standard
is so high that when judges are looking for an outright winner,
that level of perfectionism matters.
The list of
things that can be included in a style guide is endless – if
you have non-professional contributors, then it can include help
with things like apostrophes and tricky words or phrases (it’s
not alright, it’s all right, for example). There’s another
point, do you write out ‘for example’ or just use ‘eg’
(or even e.g.)?
Of course, writing
a style guide is only the start. For your publication to be truly
successful, you have to follow it.
© Mark
Shanahan, Leapfrog Corporate Communications Ltd, 2003.
