Remember that most publishers of fiction didn’t start out that way. Publishing is chock full of crap that gets perpetuated because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Everyone is too overworked and underpaid to take a lot of time formalizing changes in practice and rewriting procedural documents. (Oh, holy Crom, if only I had the time for that!)

Consider also that CMS is published by an academic press. A HUGE academic publisher with a large trade list, but nonetheless academic. The staff are the writers of the book, and it stands to reason that their own manual would be oriented more toward academic publishing (“formal writing”) than not.

Speaking strictly from the concerns of my own academic-publishing, managing-ed staff: more than anything, they want consistency. Preferably consistency across all our books. (But we’ll reluctantly settle for consistency within each book under certain circumstances.) If one’s paramount criterion is “institutional consistency,” then one tends to be prescriptivist.

Fiction is, by definition, not consistent between books. It’s antithetical to art to make all works conform to the same style of writing. Fiction publishers who don’t know this are, in a word, ignorant. Fortunately, the vast majority of them are savvy to this and are only looking for basic consistency (e.g. is the character’s name spelled the same throughout); plot- and story-logic; and grammar and punctuation that facilitate, rather than impede, meaning between the writer and reader.

I should note that what facilitates or impedes meaning depends entirely on what meaning the fiction writer is trying to convey. That’s where a copyeditor proves her chops: in identifying what the author’s aim is.

Best,

dave

Which is to say, I think CMS has a lot of value, but that’s because publishers give me the leeway to use my own discretion about when to follow it, as long as the author and I can back up our choices by showing how they help the integrity of the story.

As a free-speller, I do let my beta readers know which words are intentionally spelled the way that spell them. Don’t worry, I’m not too radical in my novel.

The main thing is that the story flows. I sometimes use too many “old” words and my beta readers tell me ease up on them so that they’re not running to a wordbook every other page.

It’s interesting that as INTJ’s we both come at it that way, especially since I think a lot of people would expect INTJ’s to be perfectionistic and demand things be technically correct. But for me it’s all about the goal of the project and the goal of a sci fi book isn’t correctness, it’s to entertain, provoke thought and help the reader lose him or herself (not themselves haha) in the story.

Thanks.

I am enrolled in a proofreading and copyediting course. My professor recommended this particular posting since we are currently learning about style sheets.

I found your info very thorough and helpful. I have a much clearer picture of what goes into a style sheet and how they are created.

As a SF/F reader I agree with you on the point you made about style guides not always being a good fit for the genre. So is there a particular guide that lends itself to sci fi better than Chicago?