Why an editorial style sheet is not enough

A simple, lonely editorial style sheet is a lost opportunity. There’s so much more you can do to support your client, leave a good impression and thereby earn repeat business.

The humble editorial style sheet is a powerful beast. Done right, it is a robust piece of communication that sets your client up for success in the rest of their project.

It does this by documenting the key editorial principles that you – as the copyeditor or proofreader – have followed, as well as the project-specific decisions you’ve taken. This allows the client to move forward with confidence, ensuring that any further changes or additions are consistent with what is already in the text in terms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization and myriad other aspects.

Why an editorial style sheet is indispensable – but not enough

Some of my style sheets – ones for especially complex projects – extend to dozens of pages. But even the simplest projects need style sheets. Imagine building a house without an architectural plan, treating a patient without their medical history, baking a fancy cake without a recipe or servicing a car without its log book. All are possible, but the result will be so much better if you have access to the appropriate documentation.

So, a style sheet is invaluable. But a simple style sheet alone is very often not enough – as I’ve seen from a career spent both compiling handovers for my clients and receiving handovers from the freelancers I manage.

For the full power of a style sheet to be realized, it needs to be considered as part of the whole package (i.e. the handover) you send to your client along with the completed editorial work.

To construct a high-quality editorial handover, you need to consider four vital questions.

What do you want to achieve?

Before you start constructing your handover, you need to understand what you want to achieve. This means two things:

• You need to understand the client’s editorial background, needs and priorities, and what they plan to do with the manuscript after it leaves you.
• You need to understand your own requirements – what you want the client to know in order to achieve whatever outcomes are important to you (such as avoiding the client coming back to you with trivial questions, or endeavouring to ensure your hard work isn’t spoiled by inconsistent changes being made in the text after it leaves you).

In other words, your style sheet and other documentation need to consider the wider context.

Are you optimizing your style sheet?

Here’s where the good old style sheet comes in. But there are style sheets and there are style sheets. Every time you compile one, you need to make decisions about the structure you use (e.g. the headings you choose) and the content you include (e.g. the level of detail).

I use a different style sheet approach (sometimes slightly different, sometimes radically different) for each of my clients. And for some clients, the approach varies on a project-by-project basis too.

Ensure your style sheet encompasses all of the project’s features.

What else does the client need to know?

On almost every project, there will be things the client needs to know that don’t belong in a style sheet because they are not related to the editorial styles used in the text. For example, you might need to give the client information about a permissions issue or let them know about a dispute that arose during the editorial work.

If you think of your handover simply as ‘edited manuscript plus style sheet’, there’s a risk you’ll omit crucial information that the client needs to know – or perhaps confuse the client by not clearly distinguishing between stylistic and other details. A high-quality editorial handover is comprehensive and clear in the information it imparts.

Where do you want the client to start?

Have you thought about the ‘doorway’ you’ll give the client into your editorial work? Some clients will be intimidated by the very idea of editing and may appreciate lots of information on how to navigate through and beyond the doorway. For others, the primary concern will be jumping through the doorway as efficiently as possible and sprinting to the ‘horizon’ of publication.

Both the information you supply and the way you deliver it can make a huge difference to a client’s experience of your handover. Both should be tailored to the client as far as possible.

An editorial style sheet should encompass the whole project

Let’s go back to the medical care analogy above. Think of yourself as a medical professional referring a patient (the manuscript) onwards to another medical pro. The second medical pro obviously needs to know the details of the treatment you gave the patient – that’s what your style sheet is for. But they also need to know a bit about the patient more broadly – their personal circumstances and, where relevant, their goals and feelings about treatment. And the information needs to be appropriate to the needs of the second medical pro – for example, a referral to a physiotherapist is unlikely to take the same format as a referral to a heart surgeon.

A style sheet is a vital component of an editorial handover, but it is not enough. To maximize the chance of a happy client and therefore repeat business, consider the project and the client’s needs more broadly, and design your documentation and handover accordingly.