Author: selfpublishingadvisor

Professionally published books are edited with a document little known to the public: the style sheet.

A style sheet is a list of terms, rules, and preferences used for editing. This sheet helps with correctness and consistency, as grammatically correct yet inconsistent writing can distract readers.

All traditional publishers create style sheets with their authors at the beginning of the editorial process and pass it down to copyeditors and proofreaders.

But many self-publishing writers neglect the style sheet. Either they self-edit without any outside help or hire an editor who doesn’t use this industry practice.

If you’re entering self-publishing as a career, I recommend that you keep a style sheet for every book. Whether you create one during the revision process or collaborate with a hired editor, the style sheet will be an invaluable tool that will only strengthen your books, especially if you’re a series author.

What does a style sheet look like?

Publishers all have different conventions for how they construct a style sheet. What’s important is that you include notes that will help you edit the best.

With that in mind, there are common elements for a style sheet.

Basic information and reference materials

At the top of the sheet, put down your book’s title and author’s name. From there, note what style manual and dictionary you’re using.

Style manuals and dictionaries vary wildly based on country and category. However, with U.S. trade publishing, The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) is the industry standard, with Merriam-Webster being the recommended dictionary for CMOS.

If you’re a self-publisher, you can choose whichever resources you prefer, but consider the industry standard first.

If you want professional-level editing, you need to choose specific references so that all project editors follow the same rules. Otherwise, you may have editors reversing each other’s changes due to using different dictionaries!

The alpha list

The most common section is the alpha list, also called a list of terms and names. This list orders the important words and phrases in your book alphabetically and is often subdivided by starting letter.

The most common listed terms are unique words, phrases, and proper names. If a word isn’t in your designated dictionary, include it on the style sheet. Proper names should also be included, especially if they’re names of real-life people. One of the most embarrassing editing blunders you can make is misspelling a real person’s name!

Beyond that, it’s also helpful to list common, distinctive terms in your work or the words you anticipate tripping over. Many words have variant spellings, and choosing one is ideal, so you aren’t flipping between, say, disk and disc.

Frequently, term entries will include additional information like a term’s part of speech or definition for unique words. For instance, you may put the label “(n)” for “noun” after a word.

You can even include nonalphabetical sections in your alpha list. For example, many novelists keep separate sections for character names, places, timelines, and word-building concepts.

Style rules and preferences

To the anguish of many an editor, grammar and style rules can vary greatly between style guides.

For the most part, an editor will follow the rules of one specific style guide in tandem with a publisher’s house style. However, it’s useful to note the most common rules and any digressions from the reference materials.

Practically all style sheets mention whether a book uses the serial comma. Also called the Oxford comma, it’s the comma before the coordinating conjunction in a list of three or more items, such as “x, y, and z.”

The serial comma’s a sore point among editors, with CMOS abiding by it but AP Style (for U.S. newspapers) mostly leaving it out. Even with the style manual listed, style sheets note if the serial comma is in place or not. That’s for cases when the author is inconsistent or typically works under a different style, such as a journalist writing a memoir.

As with the alpha list, sections vary, but the most common ones are:

• punctuation & hyphenation
• capitalization
• abbreviations and acronyms
• numbers and dates
• treatment of foreign words and phrases
• craft elements (point-of-view, verb tense)
• captions (for books with graphical elements)
• references, citations, bibliography
• copyright and licensing permissions

If you have any style rules you’d die on a hill for, staying involved with the style sheet will help you retain these rules, even when your editors have different preferences. Ideally, these should be

marked as “author’s preference” when it deviates from your style manual. Remember that if you’re deviating from a standard rule, ask yourself why that rule is in place. Break the rules purposely—not carelessly.

Beyond the first book

Again, a style sheet varies by the book. Include whatever will help you and your editors.

If you’re writing a series, definitely keep the style sheet and pass it on to editors of subsequent entries. The longer the series, the more opportunities for introducing mistakes, and keeping a folder of style sheets will mitigate those mistakes and even provide a template for the sequel’s style sheet.

(And if it’s helpful, you can create an entire series bible—but that’s a matter for a different post.)

If you want to go seriously into style sheets, look up examples of style sheets online or ask your author and editor friends for copies of their sheets. With practice, your editing will improve, and so will your book!

Over to you: Do YOU use style sheets? If so, what sections and rules do YOU tend to include?

Here’s the hard truth: most writing software out there isn’t made for book authors.

Most digital writers use one of the default word processing programs, like Microsoft Word, Pages from Apple, or Google Docs. Many users find one of the default programs to be enough.

However, even these powerful tools show their cracks once your file hits a specific size. Many writers can testify to the headaches of a document becoming sluggish as its page count expands into the hundreds. Then you’re faced with either bearing the slowness or splitting the manuscript file into chapters or sections, which becomes a pain when rewriting.

It also can be unwieldy to restructure a book, moving paragraphs and sections throughout the document. You may even have some notes separate from the document you need to switch between.

Fortunately for Word, Pages, and Docs users, these programs are continually improving. But if you find any pain with the typical word processors, I have some recommendations.

A world of word processors exists specifically programmed and designed for writers, with tools that can help you plan, write, and even publish a manuscript. I’ll start with the #1 player of the bunch, Scrivener, and then touch upon one of its many counterparts, yWriter.

Scrivener: The Processor of Processors

You might’ve heard of Scrivener. Available on Windows, macOS, and even iOS, Scrivener 3 is the most popular of its lot. It boasts a sleek interface, a rich suite of features, and a long list of users who are bestselling authors.

Scrivener incorporates several features that make it useful for book writing. For instance, Scrivener fashions itself as a digital “ring binder,” in that a document is divided into folders and subfiles. So, for example, you can give a chapter its own folder, then have scenes within that chapter as individual files that you can drag and drop to reorder or even move between sections. This results in a faster program and less text to worry about.

Perhaps more iconic to Scrivener is its digital corkboard. On this corkboard, you can create virtual index cards, order them, color code them, and type blurbs on the cards. They are similar to the tried-and-true method of using index cards on a corkboard to outline a book.

If the corkboard doesn’t suit your style, opt for Scrivener’s outliner, which displays the folder and files in a drag-and-drop interface.

Much more can be written on Scrivener, whether it’s the templates, word count goals, full-screen display, exporter . . . the point is, Scrivener has almost all the tools that you may need to write a full-length book.

Now, one of Scrivener’s double-edged swords is its pricing. At $49 each, the one-time license purchases of Windows and macOS quickly save money compared to a Scrivener subscription. There’s also a 30-day free trial and an educational discount.

However, a license only covers one type of operating system (the macOS-Windows bundle is $80), and the iOS app must be bought separately. Also, any pricing looks daunting compared to the free pricing of Google Docs.

Scrivener’s robustness also lends to a steep learning curve that can intimidate less tech-savvy writers. The software also has some hitches when backing up files and syncing them between devices.

While Scrivener may be the most popular of the bunch, there are competitors that you may end up preferring.

yWriter

Created by self-published novelist Simon Haynes, yWriter stands out as a word processor by an author for an author, especially an aspiring self-published author.

First is yWriter’s price: it’s free. You can pay to register your copy, but registration comes with no additional features and primarily serves as a donation.

yWriter features a similar core experience to Scrivener. You can organize a book into chapters, which act like folders within a project document. Within those chapters are scenes. You can click-and-drag scenes between chapters and reorder every item based on the order.

When editing a scene, the window has tabs for adding notes on the scene, from tags for keeping track of which characters are in which scenes to a worksheet of the goal-conflict-outcome model of scene structure. The word count updates regularly and even tracks your typing speed. For extra motivation, you can set a word count goal.

One of the downsides is apparent upon first look: yWriter’s interface still appears as if it’s from 10 years ago. Click-and-drag isn’t as elegant as Scrivener and can occasionally be glitchy. It also lacks many of Scrivener’s features, such as fancier formatting, advanced spellchecking, and a search feature.

If you’re an Apple user, you won’t have as smooth an experience as yWriter macOS is still in beta, but there is an iOS app for only $5.

However, yWriter remains in active development, driven by donations. It strikes a medium between the insufficiency of most word processors and the bells-and-whistles of Scrivener.

Which One Should I Choose?

Both yWriter and Scrivener have advantages that the others don’t have.

Scrivener is best if you want the most features, are a Mac user, and want a modern, slick experience. yWriter is better if you want a free program and a simpler, more minimalist setup.

And finally, the more generalist word processors still have their uses. For example, Scrivener and yWriter have zero support for simultaneous collaborative updating, while Google Docs and Microsoft Word have top-line collaboration tools. Trade-offs exist for every software.

With Scrivener and yWriter, a library of other apps exists that you can choose from to improve your writing setup. Just remember: writing tools are no substitute for the actual act of writing.

So, pick what sounds most suitable and write your book. No matter what processor you use, I bet it will turn out great!

Over to you: What word processor do YOU use to write YOUR books? What are YOUR favorite features from YOUR preferred program? What do YOU wish would be better?