If you are a student, you should have a style guide supplied by your department or institution. That doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful to supplement it with your own (more limited) list.
All writers, particularly authors, should think about putting together their own style sheet. (Publishers and large organisations are likely to already have a house style guide but you might want to keep a list of any things it doesn’t cover.)
Keep a record of the style decisions you make and then tidy it up into a neat list.
The style decisions you make should include the following:
- Word endings: ‘ize’ or ‘ise’?
- Numbers: numerals or words?
- Commas: serial or not serial?
- Dashes: spaced en rules or closed-up em rules?
- Quote marks: single or double?
There will be lots more, and many are not as simple as choosing one option for all circumstances – just make sure your decisions make sense.
You should also keep track of words you have hyphenated and any alternative spellings you have chosen.
If you are formatting your own work, extend your style sheet by creating a design specification. This should include decisions such as how headings of equal importance should look and what size the margins should be.
It may seem like a lot of effort, but a style sheet should help you spot where you have been inconsistent. Spotting inconsistencies is a key part of the proofreading process. If you aren’t sure where to start, there is a sample style sheet available on my Resources page.
Articles in this series:
Hannah McCall 
[…] have previously recommended creating your own style sheet to aid you when you are proofreading. If you aren’t sure where to start, I have produced a […]
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Love this. I have never heard this advice before.
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Thanks! It’s something that professional copy-editors and proofreaders do and it is so helpful.
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Cool anecdote: Tom Clancy had a phrase he always got wrong. First time I saw it, I thought it was intentional. He had a character say “Six of one, a dozen of the other.”
I thought, “Clever. He’s showing in a subtle way how ‘real’ humans talk.”
Until two other characters used the same phrase later in the book. Whoops.
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I love this idea. However, I am not sure where to start. The most I do is alter MS Word styles for headings, Title, etc. I didn’t realize though that you can set up dashes, commas, numbers, and so on. I am going to have to do some research.
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I’m not sure Word has features to help with the specifics of commas and numbers, but if you do find a way then I’d love to know. This sort of style sheet is mostly manually implemented I’m afraid.
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Doesn’t Word have autocorrect? One should be able to edit “1” to convert to “one” while, because of the space, leaving 1,000 intact. Maybe not.
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You can use ‘Find and Replace’ to do that sort of thing – it just has to be done carefully! I think you might also be able to use macros to achieve a similar result.
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“Find and replace” works wonders. I used it to get my current girlfriend.
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