A Matter of Style

Not long ago I edited what I thought was a paper to be submitted to the author’s church authorities. Several things about the formatting and style seemed, well, odd. The tabs were huge (even in the footnotes, which looked especially odd), and all the numbers were written in words (sixty-one thousand instead of 61,000). There were a few other little things that were strange, but these are the ones I remember. I’m used to authors more or less making up a style as they go along, and it looked like that was the case here. I happily proceeded to correct the paper to APA style. It looked really sharp when I was finished. I returned it to the author and waited for his email of thanks and praise.

The thanks came rather quickly; the praise did not. I received a new copy of the paper and a request to run through it one more time to review the author’s changes. Upon opening the file, I discovered the large tabs were back, as were the spelled-out numbers and all of the other weird little things. What’s up with this? I thought. Then, in another e-mail, came the answer. The paper was not for a local church leadership committee; it was part of a doctoral research proposal for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The author sent me a PDF of their style guide, and I quickly realized many of my brilliant “corrections” would more accurately be called “errors.”

This was not a disaster. The author could—and had—easily reject any unwanted changes I had made. The corrections I had made to the spelling and some of the phrasing were fine. In the end, the author ended up with a quality document. Still, I was left wondering who was to blame for the initial confusion over style.

I have—somewhat reluctantly—accepted the blame. I should not have assumed anything about the paper. Without any explicit instructions as to what it was, who it was for, or what style was being followed, I should have asked for clarification. You can’t assume the author will tell you up front all you need to know about a document, especially an academic paper. Many writers, especially students, will think that you automatically know everything; you are the editor, after all.

So my lesson here was “Don’t assume.” This is a useful lesson for writers too. Editors are pretty smart, but we are not psychic (as far as I know). If there are any intentional quirks in your work or a specific style that must be followed, tell your editor. He or she will appreciate the information, and you’ll probably end up with a higher-quality finished product.