How to Use a Style Sheet to Ensure Consistency in Your Writing
A valuable tool for all kinds of writers
What the heck is a style sheet?
A style sheet is a document created for a writing project (or sometimes multiple if you’re using it for things like blog posts and articles that you want to keep consistent) that outlines specific preferences in regards to things like spelling and punctuation as well as noting information like character names, locations, buildings.
Have you ever started editing a piece of your writing only to find that you’ve used ‘ok’, ‘okay’, and ‘OK’ throughout and you have no idea which one to go with? A style sheet is where you can note down these preferences that aren’t necessarily correct or incorrect (e.g. AU style is usually ‘OK’ or ‘okay’ but not ‘ok’) but do require a decision to ensure consistency.
It helps with character names: Bill not Phil. Place names: Gosford not Gosforth. Publication names: The Neverland Times not the Neverland Times.
And can even cover things like capitalisation, italics, hyphens, abbreviations, and paragraph styles.
It’s all about keeping your decisions on track and making it easy for you to polish your work during the editing process.
