An editorial style sheet is a short, project-specific document your copy editor builds while editing your manuscript. It records every significant stylistic decision made for your book: how names are spelled, whether you use the Oxford comma, how numbers are treated, and dozens of other choices that keep your text internally consistent from first page to last.
- What Does a Style Sheet Actually Contain?
- What Is the Difference Between a Style Sheet and a Style Guide?
- Should You Create a Style Sheet Before Sending Your Manuscript to an Editor?
- How Does a Fiction Style Sheet Differ from a Nonfiction One?
- How Do You Use the Style Sheet Your Editor Returns?
- Why Is a Style Sheet Essential for a Book Series?
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Does a Style Sheet Actually Contain?
A style sheet documents the specific editorial choices that apply to one manuscript and no one else’s. It typically runs one to three pages and covers the decisions an editor made when the dictionary or a style guide offered more than one correct option.
The core sections of most editorial style sheets include: punctuation preferences (Oxford comma usage, em dash or en dash, ellipsis treatment); capitalisation rules (especially for terms that could go either way, like “internet” or “the church”); number and numeral treatment (spelling out numbers below ten, or below one hundred, or some other threshold); hyphenation decisions (is it “self-published” or “self published”?); spelling preferences (American or British English, and individual word choices like “okay” versus “OK”); and typography notes (what gets italicised, what stays in roman type).
Every style sheet also includes a word list. This is an alphabetised record of proper nouns, unusual terms, and any word whose spelling or treatment required a decision. If your novel features a character named Caelynn (not Kaelyn, not Cailynn), that goes in the word list. If your nonfiction book uses “health care” as two words rather than “healthcare,” that goes in as well. The word list is the section a proofreader refers to most, because it settles questions of consistency at a glance.
Writing for the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), editor Jane Hammett sets out what a fiction style sheet should carry: the form of English used, whether verbs take -ise or -ize endings, single or double quotation marks, the treatment of numbers, and the use of italic and bold, all backed by a separate word list. Her reason for the word list is the practical one: if you meet a variant spelling on page 5, you will not remember how you handled it when it reappears on page 505.
The section most authors overlook: silent changes
Hammett makes one further point that rarely appears in author-facing advice. A style sheet is written for the people who handle the manuscript after the copy editor, and that includes the typesetter. So it should also carry a list of any silent changes the editor made, meaning corrections applied without track changes switched on, together with any instructions left in the file for the person setting the pages.
That section is worth asking for by name. A formatter working in InDesign is deciding, page by page, whether an unusual spelling or an odd capital is an authorial choice to preserve or an error to query. When the style sheet says so explicitly, that decision takes seconds. When it does not, the file comes back with a list of queries you have to answer, and the queries are usually about words your editor settled weeks earlier.
What Is the Difference Between a Style Sheet and a Style Guide?
A style guide is a comprehensive, pre-existing set of universal rules for grammar, punctuation, and formatting. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), now in its 18th edition, is the standard reference for American English book publishing. It runs to well over a thousand pages and covers everything from comma usage to citation formats. The AP Stylebook serves the same function for journalism; APA style does so for the social sciences.
A style sheet, by contrast, is short, specific to one manuscript, and created during the editing process. It records the decisions your editor made for your particular book, including any intentional deviations from the broader style guide. The timing is the clearest way to tell them apart: a style guide exists before the editor starts work; a style sheet is built while the editor is actively reading your manuscript.
| Style guide | Style sheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Universal; applies to every book that adopts it | One manuscript only |
| Length | Hundreds to thousands of pages | Typically one to three pages |
| Who writes it | A publisher or standards body | Your copy editor, during the edit |
| When it exists | Before the edit begins | Built as the edit happens |
| What it settles | The general rule | Which option was taken where the rule allows more than one, plus every deliberate departure |
| Examples | The Chicago Manual of Style, New Oxford Style Manual, AP Stylebook | Your book’s word list, character list, and punctuation decisions |
What changed in CMOS 18, and why it lands on your style sheet
The 18th edition arrived in 2024 and changed a number of rules that authors notice. Your editor’s style sheet should name which edition served as the baseline, because several of these reverse what earlier editions said. Chicago publishes the full list on its What’s New in the 18th Edition page; these are the ones most likely to affect a self-published book:
- Generic singular “they” is now endorsed for a person whose gender is unknown, unspecified, or withheld for privacy (5.51, 5.266).
- The first letter of a complete sentence after a colon is now capitalised (6.67). This one shows up on almost every page of nonfiction.
- “Ebook” is now closed, not hyphenated (7.96), and an apostrophe is now used before the “s” to form the plural of a capital letter (7.15, 7.68).
- Prepositions of five letters or more are now capitalised in titles (8.160), which changes how your own chapter titles should be set: Much Ado About Nothing, but A Room with a View.
- Words from another language used by a multilingual narrator or character no longer need italics (11.4), a decision a novelist will want to make deliberately rather than inherit.
Two further additions are worth knowing about even though they are not style sheet entries themselves. Chicago added a manuscript-to-book process outline written specifically for self-publishers (2.3), and new guidance on AI and copyright (4.5), on citing AI-generated content (14.112) and on citing AI-generated images (3.38). It also added a substantial body of guidance on fiction dialogue, covering speaker tags, interrupted speech, quotations inside dialogue, internal thought set in italics, and how to format text messages on the page (12.41 to 12.52). If your novel uses any of those, they become style sheet entries.
Should You Create a Style Sheet Before Sending Your Manuscript to an Editor?
Yes. A preliminary style sheet communicates your known preferences so the editor can align their work with your intent from the start. Without one, the editor has to guess which of your unconventional choices were intentional and which were oversights.
Your preliminary style sheet does not need to be exhaustive. Focus on the decisions you have already made deliberately: your preferred spelling variant (American or British English), whether you use the Oxford comma, how you handle dashes, your capitalisation choices for terms that could go either way, and your number treatment preference. For fiction, include a character list with correct name spellings, a note on point of view and tense, and any invented words or worldbuilding terminology. For nonfiction, list any specialised terms, abbreviations, or acronyms that appear throughout the manuscript.
The benefit is straightforward: every deliberate choice you record in advance is a question your editor does not have to raise as a query, and a passage they do not have to standardise and then un-standardise when you explain it was intentional. A half-page document does most of that work. It also front-loads communication that would otherwise arrive as scattered comments and emails during the edit itself, when it is more disruptive to answer.
One caution, because a preliminary style sheet is a starting position rather than an instruction. Your editor may have good reasons to depart from a preference you have listed, particularly where it would confuse readers or conflict with the conventions of your genre. Expect the returned style sheet to differ from the one you sent, and expect the differences to be explained.
How Does a Fiction Style Sheet Differ from a Nonfiction One?
Both fiction and nonfiction style sheets share the same core sections: punctuation, capitalisation, number treatment, hyphenation, and a word list. The differences lie in the additional sections each type requires.
Fiction style sheets must include detailed character lists. For each character, the editor records name spelling, physical traits (hair colour, eye colour, approximate age), key relationships, and backstory details that must remain consistent across the manuscript. A character who has brown eyes in chapter three cannot have blue eyes in chapter twenty without explanation. Hammett’s worked example on the CIEP site shows the level of detail that works: “Skye (age 14 at end of Book 1, born May 2009). Appearance: short dark brown hair, 5 foot 4, scar over right eye, brown eyes.” That much specificity catches mid-novel continuity errors even careful authors miss.
Fiction style sheets also require a chronological timeline, which matters most for non-linear narratives, multiple points of view, or stories spanning years. Worldbuilding notes belong here too, for fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction. Invented words, place names, fictional rules, and unconventional capitalisation conventions all need documenting. If your fantasy novel capitalises “the Sight” as a proper noun but leaves “the darkness” lowercase, that distinction belongs in the style sheet. Editor Amy Schneider set out the reasoning for each of these sections in a four-part series for An American Editor, taking general style, characters, locations, and timeline in turn. It remains the fullest free treatment of the subject we could trace.
Nonfiction style sheets, by contrast, focus on terminology consistency, abbreviation conventions, and citation treatment. A book on medical topics needs every drug name, condition, and procedure spelled and capitalised identically throughout. A history book needs consistent date formats and naming conventions for historical figures. The Copyeditor’s Handbook by Amy Einsohn and Marilyn Schwartz, now in its fourth edition from University of California Press, devotes a section of its chapter on basic procedures to style sheets and adds a checklist of editorial preferences at the back. The fourth edition also added material specifically on serving self-publishing authors, which earlier editions did not carry.
How Do You Use the Style Sheet Your Editor Returns?
When your copy editor returns your edited manuscript, the style sheet should accompany it as a separate document. Treat it as your master reference for every stage that follows.
During proofreading, the style sheet is the definitive authority on correct spellings, character names, locations, and punctuation rules. If you are reviewing track changes from your editor, the style sheet explains the reasoning behind systematic changes. Your editor changed every instance of “OK” to “okay” not on a whim but because the style sheet locked that decision early in the process.
If you hire a separate proofreader, and hiring one is the usual advice because the person who copy edits should not also proofread, send them the style sheet. This prevents the proofreader from second-guessing or reversing decisions the copy editor already made. Without it, a new proofreader has to reconstruct every decision from scratch, which costs time and risks introducing inconsistency rather than removing it.
The style sheet also serves as a self-education tool. Read it carefully and you will learn about your own writing habits. If the word list contains a dozen entries where your editor standardised variant spellings, that tells you where your consistency tends to slip. If the copy editing stage uncovered that you alternate between two capitalisation conventions for the same term, that is a pattern to watch for in future manuscripts.
When your manuscript reaches the formatting stage, the style sheet matters again. Formatters working in InDesign use it to confirm that the paragraph and character styles they apply match the editorial decisions already made. A style sheet specifying British spelling conventions tells the formatter not to flag “colour” or “realise” as errors when running spell checks against the typeset pages. That is also why it is worth sending the style sheet on to whoever handles your notes and other fiddly typesetting, not just to the proofreader.
Why Is a Style Sheet Essential for a Book Series?
For authors writing a series, a style sheet is not optional; it is essential infrastructure. Months or years may pass between volumes. Different editors may work on different books. Readers will notice continuity errors: a character’s eye colour changing between books, a location’s name spelled differently, an invented term used inconsistently.
Editor Carolyn Haley, writing in the Thinking Fiction column at An American Editor, puts it plainly: “The most important part of editing a series is building a comprehensive style sheet.” Her reasoning is that months or years may pass between volumes and different editors may work on different books, so the style sheet becomes what she calls the series’ connective tissue. It should be expanded from the first book’s style sheet and updated with each new volume, tracking character names and evolving relationships, location names and descriptions, invented words and terminology, chronological timelines, and any series-specific conventions.
Haley adds a practical instruction that is easy to miss and expensive to skip. When an editor is hired for a volume later in the sequence, someone has to confirm whether they are expected to build a fresh style sheet for that volume or fold the new material into the existing one so that a single sheet travels with the series. Left unasked, that question produces several partial style sheets that disagree with each other, which is worse than having none.
What the handover looks like without one
The practical value is easiest to see from the other side of the handover. When a new editor picks up book three, the style sheet tells them the protagonist’s mother’s name is spelled “Eimear” and not “Eimer,” that the fictional city of Vael-Kirin takes a hyphen, and that every chapter in the series opens with an epigraph in italics. Without it, the editor has to re-read the earlier books at your expense or rely on your memory, and neither is dependable. Haley’s advice for the case where a volume arrives with no style sheet is blunt: the editor needs a copy of the earlier book and extra time in the quote, because every style point has to be reverse-engineered from the published text.
The same problem reaches the production stage. Where a series is formatted volume by volume over several years, the small drifts that surface during typesetting are almost always ones a running style sheet would have caught: a character’s name acquiring an accent in book two that it did not have in book one, or an invented unit of currency changing spelling between volumes. They are fixable at that point, but fixing them means going back to the author to establish which spelling was intended, and that is a round trip the style sheet exists to prevent.
A style sheet is a small document that does a disproportionate amount of work. It settles the questions your editor already answered so that nobody downstream has to answer them again, and it travels with your book from copy editing through proofreading and into typesetting. Ask for one at the start of the edit, send a half-page of your own preferences before the editor begins, and keep the returned version with your manuscript files. If you are writing a series, keep updating the same document rather than starting a new one for each volume.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if my copy editor does not provide a style sheet?
Ask for one. Style sheets are treated as part of the copy editing process in the standard professional references, including The Copyeditor’s Handbook, so it is a reasonable thing to expect and a reasonable thing to raise. If your editor cannot supply one, you can build your own from the edited manuscript by working through it and noting all proper nouns, spelling choices, capitalisation rules, number treatments, and hyphenation decisions. That takes time, which is the argument for agreeing the deliverable before the edit starts rather than after.
How specific should a fiction style sheet be about character details?
As specific as the manuscript requires for internal consistency. At minimum, record each character’s full name spelling, approximate age, key physical traits (hair colour, eye colour, distinguishing features), and significant relationships. For fantasy or science fiction, add any special abilities, titles, or affiliations. The goal is to catch the moment when a character described as left-handed in chapter four uses their right hand to draw a sword in chapter twelve.
Do I need to follow The Chicago Manual of Style for my self-published book?
CMOS is the default standard for American English book publishing and the reference most professional copy editors use. Readers conditioned by traditionally published books expect its conventions, so significant deviations can make a book look unpolished. That said, CMOS is a guide, not a law. You may deviate from it intentionally, and those deviations are precisely what get documented in your style sheet. If you are publishing in British English, the New Oxford Style Manual is the equivalent reference.
Which edition of Chicago should my style sheet name?
Whichever one your editor actually worked from, stated explicitly, because the 18th edition changed rules that earlier editions settled differently. It now capitalises the first word of a complete sentence after a colon, closes up “ebook,” capitalises prepositions of five letters or more in titles, and endorses the generic singular “they.” Chicago lists every change on its What’s New in the 18th Edition page. A style sheet that says only “follows CMOS” leaves your proofreader guessing which set of rules applies.
Can I use a style sheet template instead of creating one from scratch?
Yes, and starting from a structure is better than starting from a blank page, because a template stops you overlooking a standard category such as punctuation, capitalisation, numbers, or the word list. The CIEP’s article on creating style sheets for fiction sets out the categories to include, and Amy Schneider’s four-part series at An American Editor works through general style, characters, locations, and timeline in turn. Fill the structure in with your manuscript’s specific decisions rather than treating any template as a finished document.
Should I update my style sheet if I revise my book after publication?
Yes. Any revision that changes character names, introduces new terminology, adjusts spelling conventions, or modifies factual content should be reflected in the style sheet. If you later produce a second edition or a new book in the same series, the updated style sheet preserves the revision history and shows the next editor or proofreader what changed and why.
