by Jennie Ruby
A complaint I've heard from students lately is that in school no one learns about "editorial style," which is what informs professional editors on such abstruse matters as whether to place a period inside or outside a closing quote mark, whether to hyphenate decision making, and when to use an apostrophe alone for the possessive versus when to use it with an s. Most people, it seems, muddle through business letters, e-mail, and reports just feeling dumb for not knowing these things. Meanwhile, an entire industry exists that publishes volumes on style.
There are style manuals for publishing medical research (the AMA style guide from the American Medical Association; the Council of Biology Editors style guide). There are style guides for publishing research in the field of psychology (the APA style manual from the American Psychological Association). There is a style guide for government publishing (the GPO, or Government Printing Office, style guide). The AP style guide is for magazines and newspapers (Associated Press), and last, but not by any means least, is the "Chicago Manual of Style," originally for academic publishing in a wide range of fields, but now used extensively by businesses, associations, and government as a guide for publishing everything from newsletters to multivolume books.
What do style guides cover? They step in where grammar rules leave off. While grammar tells you to use an apostrophe followed by s to indicate the possessive form of a noun, a style guide tells you when not to use the s and when to place the apostrophe after the s. While grammar tells you to use quotation marks to indicate a direct quote, style tells you whether they should be double or single quotation marks and whether a period, comma, question mark, or exclamation point should be placed inside or outside the closing quotation mark. Style guides tell you what words to hyphenate when they are used as unit modifiers, what words to leave open, what words to close up, and even which dictionary to consult for the spelling of compound words.
There are thousands of tiny details about how to present words in print or on screen, and these tiny details are the domain of editorial style guides. If your office publishes anything, from a brochure to an annual report, you should have a style guide designated as your official guide for these matters. Almost any style guide will do, but picking one that is particular to your topic or type of publication is a good idea.
Next week: what style guides have to say about a selection of matters, from apostrophes to parentheses and beyond.
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
Want help with a grammar issue? Email us your troubles and we'll turn Jennie loose!
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