Importance Of Stylebook For Consistency In Editing

 

Stylebooks are devices for enforcing a consistency in writing throughout the newspaper. This does not mean that the newspaper wants every one of its reporters, writers and editors to write in exactly the same way. Far from it. No newspaper wants its pages to sound like the homogenized columns of Time magazine or the Reader’s Digest. But it does want consistency in punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, the use of numbers and related matters. The press association’s joint stylebook, for example says:

Use the abbreviation Ave, Blvd. and St. only with a numbered address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Spell them out and capitalize when part of a formal street name without a number: Pennsylvania Avenue.

Although the Association Press version differs from the United Press International version in typographical dress, occasionally in wording and occasionally giving different examples, the two publications are essentially the same. Examples in this chapter are quoted from the AP version.

This rule is intended to accuse that every news story originating with either press association will abbreviate or spell out these words in exactly the same way every time. In this and other matters of style, consistency is considered both a virtue and a necessity. Editors want capitalization, punctuation, abbreviations and numbers to appear in the same form on every page of the newspaper all the way from the front page onto the market news on the inside of the back page. They want sports writers and police reporters and columnists to follow the same rules in the use of titles and nicknames. They want local writers of news stories to follow the same spelling rule that press association stories follow.

They have to ensure whatever formats are used have to have a degree of familiarity and evenness. A style book is, in that regard, very helpful in order to make sure that there is uniformity in the way the news is presented. There has to be a method, an order, in whatever layout or design is selected by a particular news agency so that the readers can identify with what they are reading in a more efficient manner.

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