Creating an Editing List/Style Guide for Your Work

[Betsy]

Hi, I'm Betsy and I'm a writer by trade. I do a combination of technical writing, which is work for hire (paid by the job or by the hour), nonfiction writing, and fiction writing.

I see a number of emerging writers posting in this group. I think that's great. I just wanted to pass along some thoughts about a tool that works for me and might help some of you too, and that is creating your own editing list and/or style guide.

One of the most well-known style guides is the Chicago Manual of Style. You can use that to look up editorial conventions. For instance, if you are writing a fantasy story or novel and the characters have titles, you can use Chicago to see how they ought to be capitalized.

If I am working on book, I like to take this process one step further, and make my own style guide that lists the words that I've already looked up, and also specialized words that might not be covered by Chicago.

When I have my first draft, I go back through my manuscript and check to make sure everything on my style guide is consistent throughout the book. Search and replace is great for this, but I recommend that you check each instance instead of making a global change. Otherwise you might accidentally change part of a word. For example, if you want to change king to King, you wouldn't want to end up with maKing or similar words in your manuscript.

When I first started writing fiction I found that I used certain words in my first drafts that could usually come out. So I'll also typically search for words like really, very, so, and then, because I know from experience that I overuse them.

Based on your own experience, you can create a similar list and use it to check your work.

Happy writing!

[Paula]

Hi Betsy,

Wonderful idea. You're right about "Find" and "Replace" - I use Word, and if you don't check each replacement you can literally create a nightmare for yourself. I liked the example you used.

I write fiction, and recently I've been doing some editing work.

I'll check out the Chicago Manual of Style. I used APA 5th edition in Grad school, and wow, what a difference writing fiction is compared to scientific papers! The biggest hangup I had to get past was double spaces after periods. I almost drove myself crazy learning to stop that old habit.

Another problem I had was leaning to format my fiction for e-readers. I wonder if Chicago will add that at some point in the future.

Nice to meet you and thanks for the tips,

Paula

[Betsy]

Hi Paula,

I'm glad you like the style guide idea.

You are right. There are editorial differences for handling scientific and humanistic text. I have found Chicago to be a good place to start for editing, but if you are editing technical content then you might need additional resources.

If you are working on technical projects, check with your clients to see if they need you to follow specific conventions. Many companies have their own style guides for branding and to cover industry-specific terminology.

You can use search and replace to remove the double spaces between sentences. Just search for period-space-space and replace it with period space. That might be easier than trying to deal with it as you write.

For advice about formatting ebooks, you won't find help in Chicago. That only covers editorial guidelines for text.

To get a general idea about ebooks, try going online to Smashwords, Lulu, and Kindle Direct Publishing. They all have documents that you can download that give instructions for formatting. They also have tools that let you upload Word files and push them into ebook formats.

If you are proficient in html, then you can find the coding guidelines online as well. I know I came across them, but didn't bookmark the pages because I'm not that technical.

There are books in print about formatting ebooks like Elizabeth Castro's EPUB Straight to the Point. I read that one and liked it. It has step-by-step instructions for creating ebooks if your original document is in Word and InDesign. You could also check your local library to see what they have.

[Paula]

Thanks, Betsy.

I figured out how to format my e-books through trial and error. There's nothing like learning to get a document to look right on Kindle!

And what's cool is, I learned I can load it, and then check for any issues with editing. Errors scream out at you from an e-reader. It's a great tool to get your work right.

[Nancy]

Paula wrote: "Thanks, Betsy.

I figured out how to format my e-books through trial and error. There's nothing like learning to get a document to look right on Kindle!

And what's cool is, I learned I can load i..."

I agree with what you're saying. I'm so tempted to hand it to a writer friend and say, "You do it for me," but I never learn that way. Tempting, though...

[Paula]

Hi Nancy,
It takes forever, but don't give up and, understand going in it will take five or six tries to get it right.
Once you do it looks great.
Paula