What is a Style Sheet?

Before your project starts, we ask you to fill out a Style Sheet. Our Style Sheet is basically a personalized guide to your book. It is where you tell your editor and/or proofreader about your book, your characters, and your specific preferences regarding grammar, punctuation, etc. While we typically refer to The Chicago Manual of Style and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (unless otherwise noted for American English), there will always be certain style preferences that are at the author’s discretion. When editing in British English, we use The Oxford Style Guide (New Hart's Rules) and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Our Style Sheet typically includes:

• A brief synopsis

• POVs

• Verb tense

• A variety of spelling, grammar, and punctuation information including but not limited to: Who or whom, words with multiple spelling options, made-up words (especially for fantasy worlds), foreign words or dialects used, ellipses, and numbers.

• Detailed bios and physical descriptors of each main character

This guide helps us when we work on your manuscript. We want to know what rules you like to bend or anything unique to your writing style that you want to stay consistent in your manuscript. We can reference this while we work, and it helps reduce excessive back-and-forth emails during the process.

Our editors and proofreaders add to the Style Sheet as they go to make sure it includes any important information regarding your specific book or series. This helps ensure consistency across the board, both among editors and proofreaders and between books in a series. We send the Style Sheet back to you after each round of editing and proofreading so you can add any additional information that comes up as you review your edits. It can also serve as a reference when writing later books in a series.