My former colleagues used to call me Style Girl, and trust me, it wasn't because I dressed so fashionably. In our department I was the go-to authority on house style, especially after I revised and updated the company style guide.
I've been asked all kinds of style questions, except perhaps this: What is "style," and why should we care about it?
Style is a set of standards -- in writing and editing for our purposes here, though there's style for design as well. Broadly, it covers spelling, grammar, punctuation, word choice and citations. The Associated Press stylebook is widely followed, as are the style guides from the University of Chicago Press, the American Psychological Association and the Modern Language Association. Style is a way of ensuring consistency, which is a tool of organized writing, which is an indication of organized thinking, which is a sign of professionalism. If that's not reason enough, here are a few more:
Inconsistencies can be a distraction. When you're watching a movie, and you notice the star's hair is parted on the left in one shot and on the right in the next, it takes you out of the movie. If I'm puzzling over why you wrote "realize" here and "realise" there, I'm not focusing on what you're trying to say. You want your work to be as easy as possible to read.
Style saves time. Once you know that "Utah Jazz" takes a plural pronoun -- The Jazz won their fifth straight game -- then, after they win the sixth game, you won't have to track down whether to say "their" or "its."
Style promotes accuracy. Consider the dictionary. It's a style guide of its own, specializing in spelling, meaning and grammar. Let's say you want to write that you retained an attorney to advise you in advance of your appearance before a government body: "I hired a counsel to counsel me before my meeting with the council." A dictionary will tell you the "style" (spelling) for the meaning you want. (As an editor, however, I would probably counsel you to rephrase it!)
Style can be tailored to your audience. If you're writing a serious report, you probably want to convey formality; you might therefore avoid most contractions and slang terms. But you'll likely make liberal use of both if you're writing a blog post and want to come across as more conversational. Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong; it depends on what you're trying to do and whom you're trying to reach.
Style is adaptable. When writers or editors mangle a sentence to make it technically follow some rule, we call it "following the stylebook out the window." A good style guide, and a good editor, always allows for exceptions and updates.
Some writers see style as insignificant. But readers don't. I've seen countless letters to the editor pointing out errors and adding, "If you can't get the little things right, how can we expect you to get the big things right?" When you have a style and follow it, readers can feel confident in the big things you have to say.
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