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Home arrow Good Writing Tips arrow Writing Style arrow Get Everyone on the Same Page: Create an Editorial Style Sheet Wednesday, 07 January 2009
 
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Get Everyone on the Same Page: Create an Editorial Style Sheet PDF Print E-mail
Are you tired of correcting the same mistakes over and over when you edit your staff's work? Does everyone in your office use a different format when writing phone numbers and email addresses? Sick of arguing about when to use a comma, spell out the number ten, and whether to use periods in acronyms? Fight it out and decide once and for all by creating an editorial style sheet for your organization.


An editorial style sheet is a chart you fill out showing how you will use, format, and spell certain words. You can also include rules about abbreviations, capitalization, acronyms, and anything else related to how words, numbers, and punctuation appear in your publications. Style sheets document all kinds of editorial decisions, such as:
  • How a person's name should be spelled (e.g. full name or nickname? middle initial?)
  • The preferred spelling of words with more than one option (e.g. zeros or zeroes?)
  • How to abbreviate state names in text (CA, Cal. or Calif?)
  • How to close business letters (Sincerely, Yours Truly)
  • Whether to use apostrophes in certain cases (1900s or 1900's?)
  • When to use bold, italics, and underlined text
  • How to punctuate bulleted lists (commas after items? periods after items? no punctuation?)

A Sample Style Sheet

See how a style sheet works

Blank Style Sheets

Download two free versions of blank style sheets to fill in yourself

 

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