The Writing Style Guide: For editors, journalists, and writers of non-fiction and fiction (How to write Book 1)

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Why have a writing style guide?

Professional writing demands a degree of uniformity, otherwise, the use of capital letters, dates, numbers, text layout, paragraph breaks, punctuation, grammar, and spelling would vary so much that everything would be a mess. You can see what happens on the internet sometimes – no rules = mess.

“Style" comes from the Latin for "pen" and that sense has been extended to "the way in which something is written or done". Newspapers and magazines, for example, usually have some form of “house” style guide - a set of rules for language usage.

Styles vary among publishing groups and even between two publications within a group. Style can reflect a publisher's idiosyncratic preferences.

Senior media and publishing staff tend to base their first professional judgment about new writers on how "clean" their copy looks. Get this right and you guarantee a head-start.

So, the aim of this writing style guide is to assist non-fiction beginners present written material that meets professional standards.

Although fiction writers will probably ignore this kind of guide - since it might affect creativity, and their efforts will be sorted out by publishers - some sort of style will still help produce fiction work that looks accomplished.

Since there is some variation in professional writing standards, compiling this guide required an "averaging out" of existing style guides used by publishers in English-language countries over several decades. There are some marked differences between UK-influenced countries and the United States and some countries within its orbit. These are noted briefly in the guide.

The growing exposure of readers and writers to conflicting modes and various versions of so-called “standard English” – in advertising, marketing, broadcasting, popular music, special interest group jargon, internet publishing, online threads, etc – has obscured clear definitions of much usage and style.

That, and an inadequate understanding of language structure among some newcomers to writing, have made it necessary to broaden the scope of this guide. And maybe relax a little .

This guide is not a substitute for dictionaries or grammar reference books. For many writers, it should be more consistent than online aids to grammar, spelling, synonyms and style, because those tend to lean towards the “colonisation” of English language by the likes of Microsoft, Apple and other software companies.

BUT…a warning: aficionados of English as she should be writ will debate until the sun sets whether one form of usage is more correct than another. So be prepared to disagree with what follows.

A vanishing breed, subeditors always prided themselves on their knowledge of how our language ought to be used in a stripped-down form, its embellishments removed to enhance clarity. Their ministrations to the uneven work of generations of reporters was led by the aim to make any piece of writing easy to read by an 11-year-old.

As the world’s print news media has shrunk before the growth of online publishing, subs have been largely dispensed with as an unsustainable cost. Whereas half a century ago nothing appeared in print without half a dozen pairs of eyes checking its provenance, accuracy and clarity, these days most news reports appear with only one sub having checked it.

Mistakes abound.