House style - by Robert Ritter
House style
R. M. Ritter, author of The Oxford Style Manual
In its broadest sense, ‘house style’ is the way a publisher or printer typically produces its work: it encompasses every aspect of how a publication is presented, including its spelling, grammar, punctuation, typography, hyphenation, references, and layout. This defi nition can extend beyond print to such physical features as uniform bindings, paper, format, or dust jackets, and even specific colours and presentation of logos or colophons. In practical terms, the purpose of house style is to establish guidelines for everyone involved in creating a publication to follow, in order to ensure accuracy and consistency. Nowadays it is usually imposed by a publisher’s copy-editors and proofreaders as part of the editing process.
While the vast majority of these guidelines are unremarkable – good grammar, standard spelling, sensible punctuation – people who are not involved in producing texts (and some who are) tend to think of house style as concentrating on those elements that are either contentious or arbitrary. For example,
“She said she liked the colors ‘red, white and blue.’”
is nearly identical to
‘She said she liked the colours “red, white, and blue”.’
and the minor differences in spelling, punctuation, and quotation marks do not affect its meaning. So why go to all the trouble to impose such seemingly whimsical alterations?
Since the birth of printing, printers recognized that authors are notoriously inconsistent. This is hardly surprising: when writing we are concerned for the most part with what we are saying, not how we are saying it, or what it looks like thereafter. And a text of any length is likely to have variations in style that are inconsequential to the writer, who is concentrating on substance over style. Nevertheless, readers do pick up on irregularities, though they might not be looking for them. Even if such variations do not actually muddle the sense, they can diminish the ease or pleasure of reading; and if there are enough of them, they can actually cast doubt on the quality or reliability of the writer or publisher.
One might think the most sensible course is simply to mirror a writer’s preferred usage, and iron out the differences. Unfortunately, such a task is time-consuming, expensive, and inexact, since it is by no means certain that a writer’s usage on page 1 will reflect the style that carries through – barring lapses – to the end. To do this accurately would require compiling a list of all style preferences as they crop up, deciding which are most common, and then starting over to impose them properly – a process that would need to begin afresh for each work. So, to avoid the effort of reinventing the wheel with each text, publishers impose their own styles, which are familiar to them, to ensure that consistency is followed from the very first.
These days, publishers rely on style guides that are considered to reflect established standards in their own countries or, in the case of academic work, their own disciplines or fields. They might disagree with those guides in some respects: variations are often listed on a publisher’s website. If a work is to be published quickly, or is to be collected with similar works, or is non-fiction, a publisher’s house style is more likely to be imposed unilaterally during editing. In the case of fiction or larger works, publishers tend to seek authors’ preferences, and establish a happy medium.
