Editing with style

Is it “my boss’s dirty laundry” or “my boss’ dirty laundry”? Should it be “an historian” or “a historian”?

If other people will be reading what you’re writing, a style guide may be the best place to check.

A style guide outlines all of the choices an organization has made for its published content regarding grammar, language usage, punctuation, even design. Style guides may not be as commonly used on the internet as they are in the world of print, but organizations that write for the web have as much to benefit from them.

The two main reasons to use a style guide are correctness and consistency. The advantages of being correct are obvious enough, but being consistent is just as important. For example, spelling judgement first with an “e” and then leaving it out (judgment) further down the page may seem trivial, but oversights like this add up and will be noticed by your visitors; even visitors who don’t consider themselves nitpickers may still register the inconsistencies without thinking about it.

Credibility is at stake. The visitor thinks, If the company has missed these details, what else has it gotten wrong? Maintaining your credibility is a big part of growing your online audience.

One of the only major news organizations to make their style guide (or at least parts of it) freely available on the web is the respected magazine on business and world affairs The Economist. It’s a good one too. Propounding a no-nonsense, jargon-free approach to writing, The Economist’s style guide presents its house style with the same crispness that it prescribes. In the section on syntax, it advises: “Do your best to be lucid (‘I see but one rule: to be clear’, Stendhal). Simple sentences help.”

If you deal in news and don’t yet have a style guide to work from, The Economist’s is a good starting point.