I’ve always thought it amazing how a copyeditor’s style sheet can give you a feel for the book as a whole, just from the list of words. Here, for instance, are some of the “B” words from my recent copyedit of Josh Conviser’s Echelon:
baby-perfect (adj)
baby-soft (after n)
bad-ass
baht (s, pl)
balls on
bergs
big-ass (adj)
Bigfoot
big-time
biocrete
biokill
bioware
biz suit
blood-flushed
body-sock
bots
breakups
Bullet, the
Bushido
Amazing, isn’t it, how you can pick up the flavor of the text from that little list? :-) I love it.
Author Pamela Ribon, of Why Girls Are Weird fame, has noticed the same thing with the style sheet for her most recent novel, and talks about it here.
7 Responses to “A funny note on style sheets”
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Endeavour, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I became the first and only copyeditor ever short-listed for a World Fantasy Award.
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I’m going to reveal my idiocy here by asking what a style sheet is. So what is it?
Oh, there’s a copyediting topic I can post on! In short, the style sheet lists the characters, place names, and treatment of individual words in a manuscript. It also contains the specific grammatical styles the copyeditor used in editing (for instance, whether or not a serial comma was used).
I’ll go into it in more depth sometime soon, though!
Wow, I’m intrigued. I already want to see it and I can’t even find a synopsis.
You’ll have to wait like everyone else, I guess. :-)
That’s one of my favorite things about being a copyeditor, as I’ve never considered myself a particularly patient sort. ;-)
That was from me, btw. :)
Perhaps I’m completely misremembering something I read once, but would you include in this upcoming post whether or not it is something the author can help the copyeditor with by, say, copying their story’s dictionary from Word? I imagine it would cut down on query time, and I’m probably just exposing my ignorance by even asking since it may already be common practice.
I want to play!
I’ve posted A through D from the Terms section of the Paragaea style sheet, here: http://www.chrisroberson.net/2006/02/style-sheets.html.
Chris Roberson