November Program:
“Fix it! Change it! Standardize it!”:
Cultivating Style Sheet Savvy
|
An enchanter of words, imparting wisdom with her melodious voice and the calm of her steel-grey eyes. A storyteller who spins insightful anecdotes with irrepressible wit and verve. An instructor and initiator into the realms of editing for many (including this writer). A living avatar of the 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. Susan Allan embodies all of the above and more. She has held her position as the managing editor of the American Journal of Sociology at the University of Chicago since 1989. And since 1991, she has been teaching Basic and Intermediate Manuscript Editing certification workshops at the University of Chicago’s Graham School of General Studies (check out http://grahamschool.uchicago.edu/business/ for more information). As the information-packed heft of the 25-page handout that Allan distributed would attest, copyediting class was definitely in session for the fortunate CWIPers who attended the November CWIP program. Allan’s attentive students received a thorough schooling in “the ABCs of Style Sheets.”
There are two interpretations of style, Allan explained, that influence a copyeditor. Preeminently, publication style—as outlined by a guide such as The Chicago Manual of Style and supplemented by a trusted dictionary, such as Merriam-Webster—guides the copyeditor in the treatment of punctuation, spelling, capitalization, the usage of numbers, abbreviation, simple grammar, documentation, and also tables and illustrations. Then there is literary style, which falls more under the author’s than the editor’s purview. Issues such as voice, diction, pacing, and direction are paramount.
Areas of overlap between publication and literary style include spelling, capitalization and punctuation. And even though Allan espouses the habit of “editing from a sympathetic viewpoint,” punctuation perplexities can often create contention between authors and their editors. As she noted, “hyphenation is the number one cause of anxiety for copyeditors.” But what if the copyeditor finds herself making decisions that go against style norms? What if she’s making decisions that contradict her usual editing decisions but are tailored nicely to the project at hand? What if requests or manuscript changes made by the author alter established style norms? That’s the cue to craft a style sheet to note such discrepancies and standardize them for one’s own consistency—whether it’s at a level affecting the entire publishing house, a single project, or a mere personal preference.
Allan offered anecdotes illustrating how the saga of style sheets plays itself out in her daily life. “Gird your loins,” she warned, referring to the bulk of her handout: an 18-page style sheet crafted by a colleague of hers, Erik Carlson, for a single book-editing project at the University of Chicago Press. Many CWIPers were stunned by the sheet’s intricate level of detail, a stunning testament to the methodical mind that created it. But copyeditors beware: It’s not a good sign if a style sheet expands to the point that it becomes as big as the editorial project itself. Allan concluded her presentation by reminding everyone that a style sheet is never etched in stone; as soon as one is crafted, it’s subject to amendment. “There is always deviation,” she explained. “Even within a continuing publication, there’s always something that’s going to be different.”
Currently finishing out her contract as an editor with Lake Forest, IL-based Hospira, Inc., Anna Applegate thinks that the 26-page marketing communications style guide that she recently created is pretty darn spiffy. When she isn’t participating in poetry slams, whacking her djembe in public (relax—it’s a type of West African drum) or hosting themed parties based on the short stories of Edgar A. Poe, Anna is busy collecting submissions of essays and original artwork for a book she’s co-editing called Riding the Red Baron, Surfing the Crimson Wave: Women’s Menstrual Herstories. E-mail her at anna.applegate@yahoo.com. |
|
