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Developing a House Style Guide_storyline
- 1. M E G A N R O G E R S N A T I O N A L C O U R T R E P O R T E R S A S S O C I A T I O N C O M M U N I C A T I O N S A S S U R A N C E S P E C I A L I S T A C E S 2 0 1 6 Developing a House Style Guide
- 2. What we started with We had a set style AP Stylebook (primary) and Chicago Manual of Style (secondary) Why two? Merriam-Webster Collegiate or online In-house style sheet Listed our references and had glossary of terms
- 3. How copyediting works at NCRA Proofreader/copyeditor (me) Editor of the magazine (JCR: Journal of Court Reporting) Others who write copy Communications and marketing staff Professional development staff Photo © Jurgen Appelo
- 4. What our house guide covers Industry and association–specific terms Questions not addressed by our style references Deviations from our style references Unusual or hard-to-remember rules Extra material (guidelines, checklists)
- 5. Sample style guides: MailChimp styleguide.mailchimp.com/
- 6. Sample style guides: VICE gawker.com/here-is-the-vice-style-guide-1638739250
- 7. Sample style guides: Conscious Style Guide This also led me to the Disability Style Guide by the National Center on Disability Journalism consciousstyleguide.co m/ability-disability/
- 8. Sample style guide: Disability Style Guide ncdj.org/style-guide/
- 9. Who’s in charge? Photo © tlparadis
- 10. Sections in house style guide: References
- 11. Sections in house style guide: Voice and tone
- 12. Sections in house style guide: Genres
- 13. Sections in house style guide: Using images
- 14. Sections in house style guide: Grammar and mechanics
- 15. Sections in house style guide: Writing about people
- 16. Sections in house style guide: Glossary
- 17. Sections in house style guide: Editing checklists
- 18. It’s only helpful if it’s accessible. Image from: The Cruise of the Make Believes (1918)
- 19. The guide should be a living document. Image from: Young Frankenstein (1974)
- 20. Recap Determine what you’re starting with House guide covers: unique specifics, deviations or missing pieces from primary guides, hard-to- remember rules Figure out who’s in charge Involve the people who are involved in writing and editing Find samples as a guide Easily available and regularly reevaluated
- 21. & K E E P T H E C O N V E R S A T I O N G O I N G : M R O G E R S @ N C R A . O R G @ M E G A N _ S T O L Z Questions and comments?
Editor's Notes
- Why AP? As an association, our primary audience is our membership (court reporters, captioners, CR students and teachers, etc.) Our audience is professional but not academic. AP fits because the linguistic level of journalistic pieces tends to match our level as well. More about our audience: Grammar and mechanics matter in their job (captions and legal transcripts), and they’re tested on this in their credential exams – they have high expectations for both themselves and their national association. Technical/vocational skill – can get into the field with an associates rather than a bachelors We have other member types, but these are our bread and butter Secondary audiences include nonmembers in the field, prospective students, people in the legal field (i.e., paralegals), members of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community Why Chicago? For books or other considerations not addressed by AP, we use CMOS. Incidentally, this is different from the style guide our members use (Gregg Reference Manual) but that manual doesn’t match the type of writing we produce (it matches legal transcripts well). Why Merriam-Webster? Well respected by our members (a lot of them use it) and it’s the basis for our testing.
- I was hired to check for grammatical correctness across the association and bring a consistent voice Typos really bother our members/audience Initially, the idea was I’d copyedit everything – but this wasn’t consistently applied and, as my role expanded, became impractical How does the rest of the association handle copy? The monthly magazine creates or rules a large amount of our content – so much of our content will end up in the magazine at some point Articles that may appear first in the newsletter (although sometimes vice versa) The magazine also covers the entire association – stories about events, testing, industry news, etc. Other than the magazine, a lot of the copy comes out of the communications and marketing department, but not all Includes articles (newsletter and magazine), email campaigns, ads, social media, and anything that goes through design (mailing materials, event materials) Some copy originates with the professional development department but will eventually make its way to communications when it goes into design. Traditionally, each department (and sub-department) has been in charge of their own page on the website, which leads to inconsistencies as different people do different things over the course of many years This is a whole ‘nother can of worms, but was part of the reason why we needed a house guide
- Industry and association specific terms We’re a niche industry – MW isn’t likely to cover words like misstroke, realtime (the technology), speedbuilding, or voicewriting. Association terms include all our proper names: certifications, events, programs, publications, etc. This includes how to spell our organization name (acronym vs. full term, the Association, etc.). Many of the industry and association terms came from our style sheet Internal nicknames -- Sometimes, we used a different term internally rather than the official term. Make sure the official term makes it into the style guide, and clarify for staff that internal nicknames shouldn’t be used in text for public consumption. Questions not addressed by our primary references Some of these had been adopted before I came on but some came from my mental guidelines or conversations with coworkers – getting them into a style guide codified them. Examples: How does our writing differ if it’s in the magazine vs. an on-site event brochure vs. an email campaign? What is our stance on you or using contractions? Specific questions like: What order do our certifications go in? Deviations from our primary references Biggest example: AP says “no” to the serial comma; we know the vast majority of our members prefer it, so we keep it in. However, our members’ preferences don’t get to guide all of our deviations. Court reporters use a fixed-width (monospaced) font in legal transcripts, so they use two spaces after the period. WE follow modern typography best practices and don’t. Unusual or hard-to-remember rules These are from our primary guides. Examples: AP-style headlines – cap only first word and proper nouns Time: how to spell/punctuate am and pm, when to include minutes Extra material Guidelines on different types of writing and checklists (more on this later).
- There’s no need to reinvent the wheel – others have created house guides before, so I went looking for models. It’s also worth noting that it’s a good idea to mine your own copy for ideas on what to cover. I liked the way MailChimp organized their style guide (on left) – this was the inspiration for our overall organization. This will become more apparently when we go over the different sections of NCRA’s guide.
- I reviewed VICE for things I may have forgotten that they addressed. They had a more informal tone than I was looking for, but it was also written for a publication, and so much of our style revolves around our magazine (at least foundationally).
- Because a segment of our members are connected to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and we have relationships with deaf and hard-of-hearing organizations/associations, it was important to make sure our writing was respectful to other members of that community.
- I took the initiative on getting the project started, and I also managed the process. This included: putting together a beginning draft setting up meetings with different people and/or departments we have good writers on staff who are responsible for their own copy and are familiar with best practices in their own fields Ex. Marketer who writers email campaigns is trying to make sure she’s following best practices in that type of writing so people open the emails, read them, and do the appropriate call to action A lot of our copy comes from multiple departments, style guide should complement their goals, not fight them -- Our style guide vs. an imposed guide To make it a true association-wide style guide, it should reflect an overall consensus, not just one department who decides “this is how it should be” If you use freelancers, especially anyone regularly, this is a good opportunity to get them involved in the copy that they’re writing or copyediting. They may bring valuable outside knowledge to the process. incorporating revisions Sometimes revision meant coming to a consensus on conflicting suggestions – I either used my judgment or went to the senior director of marketing, membership & communications for the final word if there was a conflict. For example, one member of professional development pointed out that many technological terms are moving to a one word spelling, and we had some inconsistency on when things were one word, two words, hyphenated (i.e. online vs. off-line) – this conflicted with what she saw as modern best practices. Confirming with the senior director, we kept things as they were because that matched Merriam-Webster; knowing our members, we wanted to have a recognizable authority (to them) to point to on spelling.
- The references section lists our primary and secondary style guides (to go to first) and our primary dictionary. Explains the purpose of the house style guide Gives guidance on who to go to for specific questions
- Describing NCRA’s voice inspired by MailChimps’ “What we are and what we aren’t” Addresses: Level of formality How to use contractions How we handle pronouns (I/we/it – you/you – who/that)
- References Voice and tone Genres Using images Grammar and mechanics Writing about people Glossary (alphabetical) Editing checklists This is where we laid out specific guidelines for different types of writing Writing for the Web Hyperlinks List of NCRA vanity links Writing for a print publication Writing for marketing Guidelines for email campaigns Using you Writing for social media We have a separate social media policy, so this section also cross-references Headlines (guidelines for crafting rather than how they should be laid out)
- Codify it! This section states that we need to have the right to use a certain images and how to accredit outside images Our members don’t always realize you can’t just use an image you find off Google. Opportunity for cross-referencing: If your organization has a brand style guide, images may be covered there instead. I made sure to state the importance of using alt text as well – if part of our members’ livelihood involves accessibility (captioning), we should practice what we preach.
- This is where we got into the nitty-gritty of things like acronyms, capitalization, italics, numbers, punctuation (commas, dashes, exclamation points) – there’s too many sections to list. This is also where we addressed technology issues like how we write out Web addresses and email addresses, how we treat hyperlinks, and highlighted spelling of technological terms like email, website, WiFi, etc. This screenshot exemplifies a few things: Questions not addressed by our primary references and Industry and association–specific terms: Refers to a primary resource for acronyms, but explains what to do if the acronym is part of an association proper name Also explains when we use acronyms with our name and the name of our Foundation Highlights unusual or hard-to-remember rules: We follow AP for states, but most people are familiar with the postal codes – this lists them out Deviations from our primary references: At the same time, we sometimes use postal codes, so the house guide clarifies when that would be appropriate. This section is also where we listed that we use the serial comma.
- This is where I made sure to mention thinks like “don’t include age, nationality, religion, (dis)ability, etc. unless relevant to the story.” Full name, then last only (but what if we’re talking about family members?) Certifications – order Accessibility – emphasized importance of using respectful terminology and person-first language Politics – we’re nonpartisan, so we don’t include political parties, only states and titles
- List of terms for spelling, capitalization, and format (i.e. italics), organized in alphabetical order, including info for terms that could go by an acronym on second reference. Mine your copy for examples of what to include.
- I was inspired by Samantha Enslen’s (from Dragonfly Editorial) session on checklists last year, so that’s what I used as a basis. It made sense to me to include editing checklists as a resource in a house style guide. One overall (housekeeping, copyediting – main points, and finishing up); one more specific to copyediting, one for fact-checking.
- We’re still working on these points, so if people in the room have ideas, please share. Three-pronged approach: 1) Figure out what works for your organization in terms of how staff should be able to access the style guide That might mean print copies (probably for a smaller organization or having a few copies to share) Pros and cons: It’s always better to find a green solution, and it may be impractical to have a copy for every individual person, but there’s value in having a physical, tangible reference guide that people can flip through – also, you can’t change it easily! Might mean electronic – figure out best place for your organization on where to store it, whether that’s a network drive or Dropbox or whatever Pros and cons: Green option, everyone can theoretically access it whenever they want, “jump to a page” option to quickly get to the appropriate section from the table of contents PDF might be better to share so people can’t simply make changes as they see fit. 2) Introduce it to staff This could mean a brown bag or lunch and learn Use a game with prizes to get people into the style guide and using it – it’s less scary if they’ve already opened it and looked through it once. 3) Get senior staff behind it – Convince senior staff of the value (hopefully it doesn’t take too much convincing!) and have them go to bat for you. This isn’t an issue if the order for the house guide has come from higher up the ladder but might be helpful if you’re taking initiative on your own to create and implement one. Combo of introducing it to staff and getting senior-level buy-in will hopefully implement the style guide from both a top-down and bottom-up approach.
- A style guide needs to be flexible – determine how often to reevaluate it, and keep track of issues that pop up in between reevaluations Make sure to include the same people who were involved in the original process – if there’s a question about copy that comes out of a specific department, for example, that department should be involved in revision.