If you are a copyeditor like I am, you know about style sheets and why they are important. (And if you are a copyeditor and you don’t know about them, immediately sign up for Lourdes Venard’s Copyediting: Beginning course through the Editorial Freelancers Association!)

Style sheets are somewhat difficult to explain. Basically, they serve as a memory aid, helping you remember the rules of working on a certain document. A dictionary and a style guide, such as APA or Chicago, lay down the rules, while a style sheet helps you remember them.

A style guide is already made, while a style sheet is something you make.

“What do you put on a style sheet?” you might ask.

For me, the most important thing on a style sheet is the hyphenation of a word or term. Hyphens are my nemesis, as I have probably said before. If I see a hyphenated term and have to look it up in Merriam-Webster or Collins Dictionary to see if it is really supposed to be hyphenated, the correct term (according to the dictionary) gets put on the style sheet. In this way, the next time I see that term in the document, I can look at my style sheet to see if it is correct. This saves me the pain of having to go back to the dictionary to look it up again (and saves my clients money).

Words that are new to me get added to the style sheet as well, so that the style sheet can tell me how to spell them. Abbreviations are also an important thing to put on a style sheet (along with the words for which they stand).

This past week, I edited a document which had quite a few medical and pharmacological terms and abbreviations. Each term went onto my style sheet. I cannot tell you how much time my style sheet saved me.

People say that my memory is very good; if I may brag a little, my memory is better than average. However, even a superior memory is no substitute for a well-kept style sheet. Don’t rely on your brain; trust your style sheet.

If you are a copyeditor, what kinds of terms do you always put on your style sheets?