2. Red ink is really cool.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Writing & Editing with STYLE: Using style sheets to keep track of your imagination.
As a scholar of philology, JRR Tolkien understood that the words we choose as writers to tell our stories is crucial. In fact, in order to paint the kind of vivid "wordscape" he desired in the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien invented (and then employed) new languages to give his characters and places their own voice.
His editor must have had a stroke when first reading one of those books.
As an editor, I haven't yet come encountered a book that invented its own language, but that certainly doesn't mean that I don't encounter specialized terminology. Nearly every manuscript, whether it is a Christian book, a collection of children's stories, a war memoir, a historical novel, or a medical text, will have some sort of specialized terminology (as simple as a character's name, or as complex as a Yiddish saying) or usage (such as acronyms or uncommon typography) that I need to stay on top of. It is not my concern as a copyeditor to question whether you should name your main character "Sam" or "Bartholomew"; what I am concerned about, however, is that you use the same name, spelled and capitalized the same way, consistently throughout your book.
Consistency is key to making a book attractive to your reader.
Whether great or minor, inconsistencies in your writing (such as spelling a name differently; capitalizing "Heaven" only 50 percent of the time; or even as simple as using a mishmash of hyphens, em-dashes and en-dashes to do the same things) are not only distracting and potentially confusing to your readers, but they also make you look careless, sloppy, and unprofessional. Learning a few simple techniques to avoid inconsistencies will benefit you and your readers, and will help you really scrutinize your work whenever you are editing it yourself.
In this installment of "My Toolbox," I will introduce you to Style Sheets, the first of these techniques for writing and self-editing your work.
"You, this is Style Sheet," I say.
"Oh, nice to meet you, Style Sheet," you say. "Wait, didn't I meet you already in my website design class?"
"No," Style Sheet responds, "you must have met my cousin, Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. He works on HTML."
"Ah, ha!" you reply. "So what do you do, Style Sheets?"
"I help you remember how to handle unusual words and phrases," Style Sheets responds.
"Amazing! My editor will just love you," you say.
Now that we have introductions out of the way…
While editing a manuscript, copyeditors compile a style sheet to serve as a reference throughout the editing process. Before I begin working on a book, I set up a blank word processing document, and give it a few sections: formatting, general, character names, place names, and foreign language. As I read through the manuscript, each time I come across a word that I am unfamiliar with, I will look it up in a dictionary, and then copy it into the appropriate section on the style sheet. That way, when I encounter that word again, not only do I know what it means, but I also know how it should be used in the sentence — whether it should be capitalized or hyphenated, as well as what part of speech it is — and if I don't remember, I know that I have a handy place to refer to, rather than spending the time to look it up again. This is very useful for things like medical terminology, foreign words, place or company names, or for keeping sayings and clichés straight. It also serves as a great place to remind myself about obscure rules of usage — such as the rule that whiskey is whiskey if it is Irish or American, but whisky if it is Canadian or Scotch.
The "character names" and "place names" sections of my style sheet are invaluable for all types of books, fiction and nonfiction. Authors often accidentally change the spellings of their characters' names in the processes of writing and revising, and having my style sheet to refer to saves me from having to skim back over page after page of the text to check if there is an inconsistency. In the formatting section of the style sheet, I make brief notes about what font and font size the major sections of the book first appear in I can ensure that chapter 1 and chapter 20 appear the same, having the same size title, body text, paragraph spacing, and indentation. I also typically include what "narrative voice" the book is told in (1st or 3rd person, past or present tense, omniscient or not, etc.) because it is not uncommon to read a narrative that accidentally slips from one to another.
Style sheets are great for editing, whether it is your own work or another's, but they also can be great while you are writing. Having a list in front of you of all your characters' names and major attributes can keep you from creating duplicate or nearly-duplicate names; in your "place names" section, you can also sketch a small map of your fantasy realms, so that you have a firm idea of where everything is and can better write about how each place relates to another.
In writing non-fiction, you can use the style sheet to keep track of terms and acronyms as you go; if, for example, you are about to write "self-addressed stamped envelope," but you see that an entry for "self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE)" already appears on your style sheet — and therefore, earlier in your manuscript — then you can simply use the acronym "SASE" from that point forward.
Style sheets can prove to be a great communication tool between author and editor as well; when the author provides the editor with a style sheet full of archaic spellings for words, the editor can assume that the author has thought very carefully about the inclusion of those spellings in their text, and simply check the spellings he or she encounters in the manuscript against the spellings provided on the style sheet. The author can also dictate the answer to matters of personal preference (such as whether they want a comma before the conjunction in a list of items or not, or whether they wish to use all numerals or spell out those numbers less than ten), or show the editor that the author is choosing to deviate from the norm (such as the spelling website instead of the "accepted" Web site).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
