9

You’ve Got a Style of Your Own

Whether you’re the style guardian of your own work or the resident style keeper (stylekeeper?) in a big shop, your aim is to make consistent calls using rationales that cover most cases. Guidelines that you formalize for yourself are proprietary—that is, they belong and apply solely to you. They can take the form of a simple alphabetical style sheet or a comprehensive guide, and they can be in a notebook, on an intranet, or on an extranet so contributing authors can access them. This section offers considerations for both print and electronic guides. Creating a style guide will definitely take time and effort, but once it exists, you’ll wonder how you got along without it.

What are the advantages of creating a proprietary style guide or style sheet?

You create it, so it can be highly specific to your needs. It’s not about your company adapting to somebody else’s style but about adapting a main style to fit your company. It’s going to reflect your preferences, trademarks, and other special matters dictated by the legal liabilities or branding goals inherent in your publishing efforts. You don’t have to care what styles other companies follow once you’ve made your own thoughtful (or eccentric—hey, it’s your jargon!) decisions. Just be clear about what the sources for your standards are. Tell people something like this in a “how to use this guide section”: “For matters not covered here, please refer to [name and edition of published style guide] or [name and edition of dictionary]. Everything listed in this guide reflects the consensus of senior management and the publications staff on what will best serve our audiences.”

It can reflect a consensus that ensures it will be used. You create it for your colleagues, so they should be asked to help make sure it contains the answers they need. Every organization has its own set of recurring questions—are more than and over synonyms now? (Yes, for most of us.) Can we start a sentence with And, Because, Or, and But? (Yes, for more of us.) Do we refer to the school on a second reference as the University or the university? Ask everyone associated with writing, editing, and reviewing publications in your organization to give you a short list of terms or rules they feel uncertain about and iffy, inconsistent examples they’ve noticed in your publications. From the start, it can be pitched as a collaboration of everybody who cares about quality control. That’s a good way to get people invested in successfully launching an organization-wide style guide.

It can reinforce your professional image—and that of your organization. It should reflect careful consideration of editorial and design attributes widely acknowledged to affect credibility and accessibility. Eliminating inconsistencies makes it less likely that readers will be distracted from the main message of the document. Even though many readers may not consciously recognize style inconsistencies and usage errors, they convey the impression that a document lacks polish—and possibly has cut substantive corners. By offering clients and consumers of your publishing products consistent quality, you and your organization are linked with impressions of credibility and know-how.

Creating a style sheet to cover the frequently encountered issues that require special handling in your publications may be enough to get you started on the road to a full-blown inhouse guide. In fact, the more succinct and specific your style guide, the more likely people are to use it. And fortunately, though creating or updating a style guide can be a major undertaking, you don’t have to invent the process.

You can learn a lot from observing how major style guides are compiled—the magic words are systematically and incrementally. When it comes to the classic components of a style guide, you’ll find they fall into these categories:

Word usage. List dos and don’ts (e.g., “Refer to our organization as the firm, not the company.” “Refer to people who work for the firm as associates, not employees.”). Also list specific terms, such as the names of departments or publications. Standardize frequently confused terms: “Use ensure to mean make certain and insure to mean cover with insurance.”

Acronyms and abbreviations. List and define those commonly used by your organization. Specify which ones don’t need to be defined (such as IRS or FBI). Explain your stance on whether acronyms need to be preceded by an article, and show how to make acronyms plural (PUDs or PUD’s).

Hyphenation. List the treatment of frequently used terms that raise questions: Are they hyphenated, not hyphenated, or have they grown together to form one word? Is it day trading, day-trading, or daytrading? fiberoptic or fiber-optic? health care or healthcare? longer-term agreement or longer term agreement?

Capitalization. A style guide needn’t instruct writers to capitalize the first word in a sentence or people’s names, but it should point out certain pitfalls. For example, “Capitalize job titles before, but not after, a person’s name: Chief Executive Officer Smith, but Mary Smith, chief executive officer.” “Do not capitalize the words table and figure in text: See figure 2.” “Capitalize the first word following a colon if the phrase is a complete sentence; otherwise, lowercase it.” List specific terms that should always be capitalized, and terms with unique capitalization: 1stUp.com.

Punctuation. The main discretionary items are the use of serial commas (Tom, Dick and Harry versus Tom, Dick, and Harry) and punctuation of lists. Many writers use dashes (em dash, en dash, and hyphen) inconsistently, so examples of correct use can be helpful. The punctuation section, like the grammar section, may grow as people submit questions about what they find confusing. Ask for example sentences that show the problem in context.

Numbers. There’s a lot of latitude in using figures versus words. You can simply reference your default published style (e.g., “Use Chicago style for numbers”), but it helps to provide examples drawn specifically from your organization’s topics. This section can cover the use of numbers in text and in lists, tables, and sidebars, as well as basic rules: “Round up to whole numbers in comparisons” and “Don’t start a sentence with a figure.”

References. If you publish references, your house style should give a few typical examples (e.g., book, journal, Web site) along with a reference to your default style. Cover in-text callouts, bibliographic listings, and possibly footnote style. Remind writers that global search/replace functions should not be applied to references. Your house style may be to use serial commas and US spellings. But applying those guidelines could distort the title of a work published in the United Kingdom, for example. Preserve the original spelling and punctuation of titles listed in references.

Grammar. By definition, a style guide isn’t a grammar text. Nonetheless, a few cogent examples can save people a lot of trouble. One way to home in on the problems that trip people up is to ask your editorial staff what grammatical errors they often correct in the work they review. If you post a brief grammar section on your intranet, it will grow as people submit questions—especially if you do informal surveys. And you can encourage your writers to consult this section and ask questions. Perhaps the most vexing question in grammar is that of subject/verb agreement for collective nouns: A small percentage/a number of people/the majority is or are? Provide a rule and several examples to illustrate it.

Format. Not all style guides address format. In the interest of brevity, you may prefer to present format guidelines in a separate document. But if your writers are producing documents that go straight from their computers to your readers, you may need to treat format as intrinsic to style.

How many types of documents do your writers produce? You may want to provide electronic templates for the most common ones. For a large organization with many departments, each of which has been producing documents with its own format, the creation of a house style can be the opportunity to achieve consistency. But beware: Format can be a contentious issue if you don’t have corporate style or branding guidelines to follow. Format includes both editorial and design considerations. Here are some of them:

 Type choices—font defaults and permissible combinations

 Levels of headings

 Running headers and footers

 Logos

 List style

 Table and figure style and file format

 Address information (telephone numbers, state abbreviations)

Case Study: Using a Macro to Check for Biased Language

Problem: A large national organization needed a way for staff members to check for and correct unintentionally biased language in a wide variety of business communications. Although memos informed staff of the need to check for potentially biased terms, it was difficult for everyone to remember and correct the hundreds of terms that could be problems. The company decided to have a programmer create a macro that would search for and replace problem words. But although some problem words could be corrected through a simple search and replace—for example, changing deaf and dumb to deaf or hearing impaired—others required more intervention. For example, changing handicapped to person with a disability in the sentence This is an excellent guide for handicapped people required the writer to manually delete people.

Solution: The programmer created a macro that functioned like a spelling checker. The writer clicked a button to activate the macro, and the macro searched the document for problem words from a predetermined list. When the macro located a problem word, the writer could read the text, choose from suggested replacement words shown by the macro, and make the appropriate substitution. If necessary, the writer could pause the macro and edit the text, then restart the macro to continue checking the document. The macro was distributed on diskettes and was easy to install.

 Fax and report cover sheets

 E-mail signatures

 Colors for branding pieces (letterhead, report binding, leave-behind fact sheets and brochures, press kit folders), presentations, and Web sites

Case Study: Using a Macro to Convert Tables

Problem: A publishing company produced more than 60 newsletters a week and needed a way to quickly strip the electronic files of extraneous layout codes and convert them to multiple coded text files (including HTML) that could be sent electronically to news wires. Because of the fast turnaround, the accuracy required by the news wires, and the high error rate of the manual process, the company needed a faster, more economical, more reliable way to process the files. A programmer created a macro that would turn these newsletters into working coded text files. One challenge was converting tables. The company had many different table formats but, on its own, the macro could recognize only one type of table. For example, one table might have headings down each row that should instead be at the top of each column, while another table might be the opposite, and still another might be one large table broken into smaller tables. How can the macro tell the difference?

Solution: It can’t—but the editor can. The programmer devised a macro to act as an interactive menu. The editor can highlight a table and click a key to activate the macro. A menu prompts the editor with a list of possible table types. The editor clicks a button for the desired type, and the macro converts the table appropriately. If this isn’t what the editor wanted after all, the original table is retrieved, and the editor is again presented with the menu of options. This macro was part of a larger text conversion macro and was distributed through the company’s network on the editors’ computers.

MAKING SPECIFIC EDITORIAL CHOICES

Within reason, you can designate as “officially correct” the editorial choices that seem right to your eye and ear. Wherever alternatives exist, you’ll need to provide users of your guide with examples that offer guidance in context—that means in the context of the sorts of documents they will be writing and editing.

One way to be sure your guide is relevant to your style issues is to test it before distributing it to everyone or going live. Have a few editors work through it critically, and ask a few editors, writers, and managers to try using it for a month or so. Ask them to note what helped and what didn’t. As they encounter omissions, mistakes, and incomplete cross-references to related material, your beta-testers will give you a chance to strengthen the usefulness and accuracy of the guide. And you’re setting a precedent for updating the guide; you’ll need all the feedback you can get from now on, so you might as well make it part of the culture.

Successful corporate style guides have these characteristics in common:

They are short and to the point. They stick to the areas not covered by published style manuals, or those where the organization’s style diverges from published style manuals (e.g., capitalizing “Firm” when referring to the organization).

They get buy-in from users before they are released.

They are introduced to the organization with enough fanfare that people realize they are to be taken seriously.

They are updated frequently enough that users regard the advice as current and reliable.

They are presented and viewed as helpful tools, not as weapons to use against those who don’t conform.

Here’s a suggested list of priorities once you’ve got agreement that a proprietary guide is called for and you’re the lucky one designated to create it:

Set up a committee of the people most qualified to identify the points of confusion, research the options, and make editorial decisions. “Most qualified” means wide (not necessarily long) experience as a hands-on writer or editor and a flexible outlook that will allow them to make pragmatic decisions instead of going ballistic because something “isn’t in Webster’s.”

Ask everyone who produces documents to meet for 30 minutes to kick off the planning stage. Ask for a few volunteers right then and there to help prepare and send out a companywide e-mail survey of “things that drive you nuts or worry you most,” compile results, and set the stage for recommendations.

Target the most frequently cited style problems for immediate remedy and circulate draft guidelines for review by everyone who prepares documents, not just management. (Remember to include the layout and production specialists.) Ask for comments.

Collate comments and distribute “final” style decisions and some examples by e-mail or paper memo. Congratulations! You have begun preparing a guide by treating the most irritating editorial hotspots.

Working with management and your art director or senior design staff, begin formalizing editorial and graphic standards that everyone who prepares documents should be aware of.

Make templates of letterhead logos, addresses, taglines, trademarks, and document formats (memo, fax cover sheets, letter bids, formal proposals) available to all staff on the intranet.

Ask whoever performs copyediting and quality control reviews to make note of or keep copies of the style problems they see most often. These are likely to be the areas people need most education about—because they don’t know when to spell out numbers, they have the rules wrong (“There’s no difference between ensure and insure”), or they don’t know that there is a style decision to be made about capitalization of the first word of a clause after a colon.

Compile these refinements and nitty-gritty examples and distribute them to everyone for comment. Ask people to look for examples of when the rules don’t work or just tell you whether they “like” the rules you propose. You may not change the rules, but giving people a chance to be grouchy now can pay off later—down the road, you don’t want to hear “Why should I do it that way? ‘Our’ style, huh? Nobody asked me about it.”

Start planning the best way to get a copy of the complete set of guidelines on every desk or computer, and set a schedule for regular reviews and updates. Keep asking people to give you examples of problems from their work that need resolution so style decisions can leave the world of anecdote and personal preference and become part of the guide.

Thank everyone, personally and publicly, who has contributed to the guide.

Don’t let down your guard. A style guide is always a work in progress and will need revision as often as your organization repositions itself, adds jargon for new processes, and redesigns itself.

Make sure to tell people whenever you depart from your designated main style guide and main dictionary—and make sure people have copies of your base references within easy reach for filling the gaps in your guidelines as you continue to build them. Better to have people making somewhat consistent decisions in the meantime about, say, when to hyphenate or close up new compounds, even if you are still in the process of making changes to be more consistent with other in-house style decisions.

When new editions of your default style guide and dictionary are published, get new copies for your office. The Associated Press style guide, for example, is updated annually—not so much because its rules change, but because it needs to keep up with names and terms in the news.

PROPRIETARY STYLES AT WORK

To get a sense of the range of editorial and graphics details that a style may encompass, it’s revealing to see editors at work making style decisions in context. Here are a few examples of editors:

The managing editor of an IBM magazine for AS/400 computer users met every six months with her staff to discuss the acronyms most frequently used in the publication. They tried to decide which ones are so commonly used in the industry that they don’t need to be spelled out, even at first reference. Some of the acronyms on their list were API, CPU, FTP, LAN, SQL, IT, and ISP. They worried that not all readers would know what those terms meant, but they’re used over and over in every issue and can’t be repeatedly redefined. This is an ongoing struggle for the magazine’s staff: serving less-savvy readers while keeping copy uncluttered for advanced users.

The Editorial Eye newsletter, like many periodicals, has a style sheet adapted from the simplest rules of several major styles, in a mix both conservative and forward-looking. State abbreviations are postal-style (all caps), and the adjective US follows international style in leaving off the periods, as for the UK. Many terms that Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, and other guides show as two words (open or hyphenated) are rendered as solid compounds to reflect more contemporary usage (badmouth, onsite, freelancer, copyedit, lifestyle, online, kneejerk). And style is emphatically down even for titles preceding a proper name (Wistar Institute president and CEO Russel E. Kaufman, MD). The Eye’s editors have let go of the since–because, if–whether, and more than–over distinctions, but they hold the line against such “modern” gaffes as hyphenating -ly adverbs (The barely-tasted cookie fell to the floor) and such misusages as a myriad of, comprised of, and the nugatory as such.

That’s really what we’re trying to do with style guidance: help editors and writers and designers lose their uncertainty so readers and users won’t be bothered by unnerving little discrepancies and holes.

MAKING INTRANET CONTENT EASY TO USE

Which is more frustrating to people in search of help with style: having to flip through pages of badly organized and cryptically indexed rules, or having to scroll through long screenfuls of unsearchable items with many irrelevant links to get to the point? It’s a wash. Very few people read style guides for fun.

What you’ll learn here about online navigation has implications for print, too. It’s hard to beat great categorical organization and a great index, and it’s hard to beat an intelligent keyword search capability based on HTML with supplemental material in a PDF to show examples of graphics (forms, list styles, address formats, acceptable color and fonts, logos, and the like). In both mediums, these are the most important things to build in:

 Recognizable lists or categories of problems and choices

 Logically cross-referenced answers that can be located quickly

 Examples that make distinctions, exceptions, and applications clear

One of the biggest challenges in writing an online style guide is placing intelligent links. The trick is to embed them in the natural conversational flow of a statement—the Yale Style Guide calls it parenthetical placement—so the link makes logical sense without interrupting.

Avoid saying, “Click here for more examples of dangling modifiers.” Avoid giving the imperative “Click,” period. Why? It’s distracting—when someone is trying to find information, it’s annoying to be commanded to go somewhere else for it.

Group all minor links and footnotes at the bottom of a section, not in the main text. Phrase important links in this manner: Watch out for misplaced modifiers—dangling, wandering, and squinting—that create unwittingly humorous descriptions.

One of the best resources for intelligent online design is still the classic Guide to Web Style by Rick Levine, published by Sun Microsystems. See the Resources for Continuing Education appendix of this book for others.

If users can zero in on the questions they need answered by using keyword searches or creating bookmarks to the topics that perennially trouble them, they’ll be less likely to “wing it” or “go by ear,” two great ways to sabotage a style guide. And what an online style can do that even the best-indexed paper version can’t is offer rapid and comprehensive searching and cross-referencing.

As the Yale Style Guide puts it, an intranet should let you “get in, get what you want, and move on.” The section on intranet site design will be useful for any editor who is not familiar with the principles of online usability and navigation; here’s the gist: “Successful intranet sites assemble useful information, organize it into logical systems, and deliver the information in an efficient manner” [emphasis ours]. For more, go to http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/sites/intranet_design.html.

Time is money, especially when employees are trying to find an answer so they can get back to work. The single most important aspect to keep in mind when creating content for an online guide is the user. Providing navigation from place to place and interactive links within pages will help users get a sense of “you are here,” without which “over there” may seem irrelevant instead of enriching.

A good overview of intranets in general—how and why to set them up and what the benefits, obstacles, and system requirements are—can be found at intranetroadmap.com, where an intranet service provider has provided an Intranet Road Map. A statistic quoted on the site: “Two-thirds of Fortune 1000 companies had an intranet as long ago as July 1996, according to the site, but who knows how many contained a companywide style guide. In our experience, some surprisingly high-profile, respected organizations and companies are winging it when it comes to quality control—or making arbitrary decisions that change with each new guard.”

The truth is, online style guides don’t rank high in the mind of anyone who isn’t engaged in quality control of publications. But for those of us charged with saving organizational face and trying hard not to reinvent the wheel each time we edit a document, they’re essential,

The Yale Style Guide says, “Graphic user interfaces were designed to give people direct control over their personal computers.... The goal is to provide for the needs of all your potential users, adapting Web technology to their expectations, and never requiring the readers to simply conform to an interface that puts unnecessary obstacles in their paths.”

Here’s a summary of what an efficient intranet site tries to do to speed users through the search and skim processes basic to consulting a style guide:

Provide menus; tables of contents; button bars that let users go back, forward, or return to the opening page or a related menu page; and short summaries of what can be found on other pages. In short, give people who search differently a choice of paths leading to the same information.

Highlight keywords, write meaningful heads and subheads, and incorporate a limited number of relevant links. (Too many links discourage users; irrelevant links infuriate them.)

Be concise, organize information into short paragraphs, and don’t use a line length the entire width of the screen. (On most monitors, there is a little bit of the “page” that a user can’t see. Make sure vital information appears in the upper half of the screen.)

Use hypertext links to accommodate the needs of many different users working on different types of publications for different media. Links will lead users to relevant pages for their particular project and allow them to bypass the rest, avoiding a sense of “too much information.”

Reality: They’re Going to Print Out Pages

Face it: Most people want a cheat sheet for the problems they encounter most often. Online pages containing a lot of text should be designed for printing (i.e., not extra-wide), because that’s what people do with important online information—they want to have it on hand to absorb and refer to. You don’t want users to lose a couple words off the right margin of the printed page. The recommended online page layout “safe area” dimensions for printing (from the Yale Style Guide) for a 640- by 480-pixel screen are 535 by 295.

If these basic ideas are new conceptual territory for you, it’s time to have a meeting with your favorite resident programmer or webmaster to explain the scope and use of the guide you have in mind and to ask for help. Before you begin compiling content, think about how it must be organized for searching and linking, and learn enough about screen design to avoid simply parking a print piece online and failing to take advantage of interactivity and navigation tools.

DESIGN AND ACCESSIBILITY CONSIDERATIONS

You have to learn a bit about online design in order to write design-style guidance for your Web documents (or to edit them intelligently), as well as to help publish user-friendly online style guides.

According to the Yale Style Guide, readers see pages and screens first as a blur of shapes, text blocks, and color. Then they begin to pick out pieces of information. Type and illustration can help or can clutter the landscape with even more cues that are hard for readers to process. Hierarchy still matters very much online, but you won’t necessarily achieve it by using the same physical cues you would in a printed reference. Adapted from the Yale guide, a checklist for enhancing readability:

Direct the reader’s eye toward important information right away with strong type.

Use subtle pastel shades for background.

Avoid bold, saturated colors except for accent or infrequent spots of emphasis.

Make sure type contrasts sharply against any background color. Black type is best; reversed white type on a dark background can be hard to read.

Beware of graphic embellishments you might use reflexively on paper—horizontal rules, bullets, icons, large display type sizes. They may look grotesque on your reader’s browser.

The purpose of online design is to create a consistent, recognizable, simple plan whereby important elements look the strongest and content categories are logically organized and predictably flagged. (Don’t make users guess when an underline is a live link and when it’s an underline.)

We ask our readers to trust us when they see a link to another screenful of information. Will it be relevant, or just a slow-loading graphic? Will they find a useful design template or example sentences at the other end?

We need to use functional cues to help users understand how information is organized and how much attention they should give to certain parts in order to get to what they need. The Yale Style Guide unequivocally states that editorial landmarks like titles and headers are the fundamental human interface issue in Web pages, just as they are in any print publication. A consistent approach to titles, headlines, and subheads in your document will help your readers navigate through a complex set of Web pages.

Organizing a useful online reference actually requires that you create a style guide for the style guide! But that’s not a problem—it’s a chance to reinforce the guidelines by showing them at work. Decisions about using text styles consistently and emphatically in an intranet style guide might result in the following specs—which, ideally, would reflect the recommendations in the corporate style guide:

Headline style

Bold, capitalize initial letters—for document titles, other Web sites, proper names, product names, trade names

Downstyle

Bold, capitalize first word only—for subheads, references to other headings within the style manual, figure titles, lists

ROLLING OUT A STYLE GUIDE

The method you choose to introduce the style guide to your organization can significantly affect its success. You want your colleagues to regard the guide as an essential tool, not just another corporate manual that sits on the shelf (or on the intranet, as the case may be). When the guide is finally ready to be released and you are planning its distribution, consider the following approaches:

Get buy-in from the top. Ask the CEO to sign a letter that discusses the organization’s commitment to quality and the style guide’s role in ensuring that the organization’s written products—whether printed or electronic—represent it well. The overall message should be that everyone shares responsibility for upholding the organization’s quality standards.

Invite the users to a kickoff party. Give a presentation in which you explain how the guide is organized and how it should be used, but add an element of fun as well. One organization launched its guide with a contest, presented game-show-style, in which teams of participants scored points by answering questions about the company’s editorial and design standards. (Wheee! We nerds sure know how to have fun, don’t we?)

Make it easy for people to ask questions. Although your ultimate goal is for people to use the guide rather than picking up the phone, give them a human point of contact (not just an e-mail box) to help them become familiar with the details. If a number of people have trouble with a particular section, you’ll know what to focus on when you update the guide.

Here’s a brief Q&A with director of publications Henry Dunbar, who recently led Reading Is Fundamental in the development and rollout of its corporate style guide:

Why did you decide you needed a new style guide? Who are its intended users? When I started to work at Reading Is Fundamental in 2000, we had no consistent way of editing printed or Web-based documents. We had different methods and habits in different departments, and differences within departments. There were AP- and Chicago-style disciples and a few MLA types, but the majority followed no style guide at all. They just wrote what they thought was grammatically correct. The intended users for the editorial style guide were all staff at our headquarters in Washington, DC (approximately 100 people). We weren’t trying to establish editorial style guideline for the 4,100 people who run our programs nationwide, though we do provide them with logo usage guidelines.

What did you hope to accomplish with the guide—and have you seen evidence that the guide will support that? We hoped to make people aware of the need for editorial consistency, then to get them to follow the guidelines. Most staff people appreciate having the guide and make an effort to follow it. I base that assessment on the fact that I get questions periodically when people can’t find the answers they seek. That means they are looking things up—they are using it. Obviously, I welcome their questions.

How is your guide made available? We provide all new staff with a paper version and have a PDF version on our internal network.

What were the hardest aspects for you in getting the guide compiled? Limiting the scope of the project was difficult—and wrapping it all up. Senior management supported our efforts, but then kept asking for additional sections to be added, such as guidelines for e-mail communication and fax cover sheets. We added them, but they were not in the original plan. We also have several “still to come” appendixes at the end because we wanted to get the most important sections distributed as soon as we had them.

What does your guide cover? Here is our TOC:

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

A. Why Does RIF Have a Style Guide?

B. Base Style Guide and Dictionaries

PART 2: WORDS

A. Frequently Used Terms

B. Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Titles

C. Common Grammar and Usage Problems

PART 3: STYLE AND FORMAT

A. Lists

B. Numbers

C. Citations and References

D. Capitalization

E. Common Punctuation Errors

F. Setting Off Words and Other Text

PART 4: PUBLICATIONS GUIDELINES

A. RIF Logo Usage

B. Trademarks and Copyrights

C. RIF Boilerplate and Mission and Vision Statements

D. Photo Releases

E. Press Releases

PART 5: INDIVIDUAL COMMUNICATION FORMAT

A. Correspondence

B. E-mail Communication

C. Fax Cover Sheets

PART 6: RIF PUBLICATIONS PROCESS

PART 7: FURTHER REFERENCE

APPENDICES (still to come)

A. Riffington

B. Cultural Sensitivity

C. Foreign Language Materials

D. Editing Checklist and Sample Writer’s Guidelines

Can you share with us an excerpt from your instructions to users about why you hope they will use the guide and how you expect them to use it? Here is the text from the introduction:

Editorial style is the uniform way in which the organization presents written information. Consistent presentation is important for any organization that wants to project a professional image; it is vital to organizations that promote literacy. Having a consistent editorial style is a subtle but important way to tell the public that we care about how we communicate, and that we want our messages to be credible and accessible. Inconsistencies distract readers from the point of the communication. Additionally, having a set of predetermined guidelines saves everyone time, energy, and frustration.

As much as is possible, ALL written materials should adhere to this style. This includes:

Printed publications (handbooks, brochures, newsletters, white papers, one-page briefs, collateral materials, technical assistance, etc.)

Website information and electronic newsletters

Press releases

Executive briefings

Presentations (including external PowerPoint presentations)

Correspondence (including e-mail, letters, and faxes)

Exceptions can be made for specific projects and publications with the approval of the RIF Marketing and External Relations department.

Can you share with us an excerpt from the guide that illustrates some terms or usages special to RIF, which deviate from at least some other main style guides or dictionaries? This is the first page from our Frequently Used Terms section:

501(c)(3) No spaces between characters and parentheses. Microsoft Word may automatically turn the (c) into a circled copyright mark, so backspace to revert to parentheses. 501(c)(3) is a section of the Internal Revenue Code that designates an organization as charitable and tax exempt. Common usage: RIF is a 501(c)(3).

877-RIF-READ See style for telephone numbers (Part 3B).

ABC-C Average book cost per child. Refers to a RIF program’s budget divided by the number of children served with a 10 percent cushion factored in. Never use this abbreviation on documents and correspondence outside of the RIF office without defining it.

Adobe Acrobat A file reader that decodes documents to portable document format (PDF).

after-school, after school Hyphenate when used as an adjective (after-school activities, after-school programs). Otherwise, two words (He played with his friend after school).

age Use figures.

He is 5 years old.
He will be 4 tomorrow.
The boy, 7, has a sister, 10.
Her daughter is 3 months old.
The program is for children ages 3 to 8.
The activity is for children ages 5 and up.
She is in her 40s. (no apostrophe)
Exception: 12 ten-year-olds, not 12 10-year-olds.

When age is expressed as an adjective before a noun or as a substitute for a noun, use hyphens.

A 5-year-old boy.
It is for 8-year-olds.

See general guidelines for numbers (Part 3B). See also grade level.

age level Do not use this term. See grade level.

amended subcontract agreement Always lowercase. An amended subcontract agreement is issued if the program specialist and the local program coordinator determine that it is necessary to make changes to a proposal.

Anne Hazard Richardson RIF Volunteer of the Year Awards

First Reference: Always spell out and include RIF after Anne Richardson and before Volunteer of the Year Awards.
Subsequent References: VOYA, RIF Volunteer of the Year Awards, or Volunteer of the Year Awards is acceptable. VOYA can also refer to a person who receives the award. The VOYA program encourages local RIF programs to nominate an exceptional volunteer from their program for the award. One winner from each of the five RIF regions is selected and recognized.

approval packet Always lowercase. Packet mailed to local RIF program by national RIF once the local program’s contract has been approved for the upcoming year. It contains the subcontract agreement signed by a RIF official, a blank performance report, distribution reports, ledger, and Invoice Verification Form, as well as the approval letter, any other necessary letters, and any technical assistance materials requested by the RIF program. See IVF.

at risk, at-risk Only use hyphen when the term is used as an adjective. Preferred: Children who are at risk of educational failure. Acceptable, but try to avoid: RIF serves at-risk children in every state.

Authorizing Official Always capitalize. Always define at first reference. An Authorizing Official (AO) is the person with the highest authority at the local organization operating a RIF program. For example, the Authorizing Official for a school with a RIF program is the principal. Acceptable to abbreviate as AO after first reference.

board of directors Lowercase.

First Reference: Always write out board of directors or the complete name of the board. (Carol Rasco serves on RIF’s board of directors.)
Subsequent References: Acceptable to use only board. (She has been on the board for three years.) Exception: Board or board of directors can be capitalized if used as a title that precedes a name. See Part 3D for more rules about capitalizing titles.

Does RIF have a separate set of guidelines for its Web site? Do the print and Web people have a cooperative QC process before new content that is being published goes live? Or are they separate teams, and corrections get made after the fact (as is so common)? The website is supposed to follow the style guide. Current staff people make every effort to comply, but whole sections of the site were created before the style guide existed. Going back and updating those pages has been a slow process. This is primarily due to the fact that the web team’s priority is for getting new content up. They are a separate editorial team and have their own QC process. [Note: RIF styles these terms website and web.]

What is the main way you get people to pay attention to the style guide? They are introduced to it at a new staff orientation and corrected when examples of incorrect style are found. We have toyed with the idea of sending weekly examples of correct and incorrect style, but haven’t implemented this of yet. For the most part, people are eager to use it and find it helpful. Oddly, while this is designed for RIF purposes, many staff take the guide with them when they leave or ask for a copy when they get to their new jobs.

What other central guides and dictionaries do you refer staff to for additional guidance, whether printed or online? Again, from the Introduction:

The RIF Style Guide and Publications Manual is not meant to be comprehensive, but it should cover most issues concerning printed publications. Please use this as a primary resource when addressing editorial concerns. A style committee will review the guide periodically and make additions and changes as necessary. Decisions will be made based on what best serves the organization. For issues and topics not covered in the RIF Style Guide, please consult these guides (in this order):

Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual (RIF’s base guide)
Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition)
New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style and Usage

Additionally, any modern dictionary can be used as a reference for spelling, but when disputes or inconsistencies arise, the RIF publications team will use the online dictionary at www.m-w.com as the final authority. This is for cost and access reasons.

Questions about this guide may be referred to the RIF director of publications.

UPDATING YOUR STYLE GUIDE

Depending on the speed with which technical terminology changes and professional information becomes obsolete in a particular field, realistically, any style guide will probably be slightly out of date to some degree the minute it is released. The question is, how often do significant changes occur that affect the usefulness and credibility of the guide?

For a technology-oriented company, that might be once a month, because product names and version numbers are key elements of corporate documentation. For an association, annual updates might be sufficient. The job of maintaining the style guide can take on a life of its own if its contents are not monitored by someone with a sense of proportion about the importance of changes.

Updating the style guide gives an organization the opportunity to ask itself the all-important question “Why do we do it this way?” The process of documenting decisions can highlight standards that have become obsolete. Sometimes specifications can be traced to old technology (maybe the requirement to produce all presentations in Helvetica started because that was the only typeface available on the network printer in 1992). Make the most of updating by questioning old practices and changing those that no longer make sense.

Here is one approach for managing the update process:

Once the style guide has been distributed, designate someone to be the collection point for questions. Include a feedback mechanism (a short, simple printed or electronic form) with the guide to make it easy for people to offer comments.

Decide whether you will update the guide frequently to incorporate minor revisions (and call it Version 1.1) or less frequently to incorporate major changes (and call it Version 2.0).

Define the review process. Minor updates might require the eyes of only a few reviewers; major updates should be routed to the entire development committee, and probably to a sampling of users.

For minor updates, indicate what changed (either with a cover memo or by inserting change bars in the margins) and redistribute the guide. For major updates, consider convening the users for a presentation of the changes. Major changes should include some discussion—whether at the presentation or in the guide itself—of the rationale behind them or an explanation of why an exception to conventional wisdom is being made. Users will be far more likely to change their ways if they understand why they are being asked to take a different approach.

GUIDANCE FOR WEB SITES, TOO

Web sites need a consistent style to guide their content providers and maintenance staff. A dynamic site tends to grow quickly as new kinds and levels of information about products, services, references, and people are added. New content shouldn’t be added without regard for consistent style across pages, which will also make updating the site easier. HTML formatting tags can be done several ways; pick one way and stick with it to avoid erratic formatting.

As Web sites proliferate, a primary style task is to integrate the distinctive elements that tell visitors they’re visiting your site. Controls should work the same on every page; backgrounds, section colors, the name of your organization, addresses, logo treatment, trademark symbols, copyright statements—all of it should be coordinated. Make sure your guide advises against using browser-specific design elements that detract from the information mission. Each Web page should be proofread before it goes to the site, and the chain-of-approval process should be clear. If more than one person works on the site, designate who can authorize exceptions to the style and in what cases.

THE REALITY OF GATEKEEPING

One final bit of advice: No matter how careful you are to make your style guide easy to understand and a good thing to use, a few people will always simply ignore it. These are the same people who don’t read their employee P&P manual and wonder why they are suddenly out of leave. Don’t think of them as either your target audience or The Enemy. The real target audience for guidance is everyone who—though perhaps not publication specialists by training—wants the written products their hands touch to be clear, useful, and produced in an efficient manner. We’d be willing to bet that most of the people in your organization fall into this category. Best to act as if you believe so and approach your role of gatekeeper with optimism, assuming the best of everyone. Even the renegade in IT who refuses to recognize that the series comma is his style, too, because no mandate is an island when it comes to Our Style.