What the heck is a style sheet?

I love a good style sheet! Like, genuinely, what a joy. So, if you’ve been looking into editorial services and wondering what on earth style sheets are … or why editors seem to imagine you want one … I’d be delighted to fill you in.

style sheets, defined

A style sheet is a carefully organized document that records style decisions and other details for a manuscript or collection of texts—choices where you could reasonably go different ways, where there isn’t one obvious correct answer. And goodness knows there are a lot of those in writing! It’s generally prepared by a copyeditor, whose job is to apply any existing style guidelines plus consistency and clarity while also correcting outright errors in the text.
 
A style sheet’s main purpose is to help everybody involved (the writer or writers, editor or editors, proofreader, future contributors, etc.) make the work internally consistent. Consistent text is good for readers’ experiences and creators’ authority: It’s easier to understand and inspires confidence that we as readers are in competent hands.
 
Style sheets are typically created once a whole manuscript exists, during editing. That’s different from style guides, which exist before and to guide the writing and editing of texts. The style guide I use most often, for example, is the massive Chicago Manual of Style. When we’re working from a style guide like that, the style sheet for a particular project notes any divergences from the guide as well as decisions that are simply not covered in it.

What goes on this thing?

A style sheet for your novel might indicate how your telepathic character’s thought-based communications are styled (italicized but not in quotes, perhaps?); how particular words are spelled, hyphenated (or not), and capitalized; and the format of times of day—plus an exhaustive list of characters (in alphabetical order or in order of first appearance) with key characteristics such as pronouns, nicknames (and who uses which ones), hair and eye color, occupation or title, date of birth or age, and more. A style sheet for your website might also cover spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation, along with information like how headings and items in bulleted lists are treated.
 
Depending on who prepares the style sheet, with what relationship to the writer(s), and for what purposes, it might include explanations and/or authorities (such as a relevant style guide, dictionary, or other reference work) for certain decisions.
 
Style sheets are typically organized into sections like punctuation rules (does this manuscript use the serial comma?), treatment of numbers (which ones get spelled out and which are numerals? what do percentages look like? how about dates?), and an alphabetical list of words and phrases. As you can tell by the examples above, what categories of information go on the style sheet—and what gets listed in each one—varies significantly by project type and needs. When I worked on a superhero project whose large cast of characters had many different powers, the style sheet had an amusingly extensive—yet vitally useful—list of over twenty “super” words (superhero, supervillain, superhuman, but super speed, super strength, super senses!). A scholarly book, a romance novel, and a cookbook need and therefore get quite different style sheets … yet all of these project types benefit from this tool.

what they're for

Copyeditors don’t just make style sheets; we use them. And we use them while we make them, kind of like building a bicycle while you ride it, although admittedly this maneuver is less impressive-looking than that sounds. (Me making thoughtful faces at my laptop is not especially cinematic.) The point is that we construct a style sheet as we go, encountering the writers’ choices, doing research, noting inconsistencies, and making and recording our own decisions, often circling back to what we’re already written down and to other points in the manuscript. A good style sheet helps us make reasonable decisions one time each instead of over and over, ensure that the individual decisions all make sense together, and apply them uniformly across the whole text.
 
And in the end, we have something valuable to pass along to the writer, too. Here are some ways a writer might wish to interact with one of these documents:

• As you write, or before you hand over your manuscript to an editor, you may wish to compile a list of stylistic choices that you’ve already made—especially any that are unusual and/or important to you and your project. This doesn’t have to look like a formal style sheet (indeed, it can be a bulleted list in an email or a comment at the top of the manuscript), but these points will likely end up on your editor’s style sheet. This is a nice way to avoid changes you don’t want and to communicate ahead about points that may cause confusion.
• You can make and use your own style sheet as you edit your own work, for many of the same reasons professional editors do. It’s a lot easier to maintain consistency if you have key points written down in one place instead of trying to hold it all in your head.
• If you’ve received edits accompanied by a style sheet, skimming through the latter will help you get a sense of what decisions have been applied (or noted). It’s a little glimpse into part of your copyeditor’s process.
• If you’re not sure why a particular change was suggested in the manuscript, it’s worth checking the style sheet to see if that helps clarify. (If you’re still not sure, or you disagree, reach out to your copyeditor to discuss what’s up!)
• If you do further revisions after copyedit, or write additional texts that ought to be stylistically consistent with the existing one, the style sheet can help guide your writing.
• If you hire a proofreader for the text that has been copyedited (or get a volunteer to help with that stage), definitely pass along the style sheet for their reference.

Happy list-making and editing!!