Proofing 101: Style WITH Substance
Proofing 101 reviews simple tips for streamlining your pattern writing and editing processes. Read the intro post for why this is a useful skill even if you’re paying a tech editor.
If you wrote a lot of research papers in secondary school or college, you probably encountered a stylesheet, even if you didn’t realize it. Maybe your studies focused on the humanities and you kept a copy of the latest version of the MLA Style Handbook near your desk. Maybe you were a journalism major learning the Chicago Manual of Style. Or maybe you were educated in a country other than the US and learned a standard for your home country. Regardless, if you wrote a research paper that needed to list references at the end, you may remember looking at a book or website that showed how you were supposed to format different types of references, the general set up of the paper, and common punctuation.
In publication design, stylesheets go beyond how to format and punctuate the text of a document and also include important notes about the general look of a publication (whether printed or digital). These stylesheets include standard brand colors and fonts, the font size to be used for particular parts of a document (titles are usually several sizes larger than body text, for example), how and where logos are and are not to be used (I have a former employer whose style guide made it clear that the white version of our logo was ONLY to be used on a background of one of our other brand colors, not just any color). These stylesheets make sure that every item produced for a specific business/organization/school (sometimes going beyond documents or websites to T-shirts or other merch) is consistent with a visual standard and is thus recognizable as belonging to that business/organization/school’s brand.
As a designer, your patterns are representative of your brand as a designer. Your patterns need a stylesheet.
In knitting patterns, stylesheets take on additional importance because there are so many elements of a knitting pattern where there's no one right way to handle a particular set of instructions (unless you are designing in Japan, where there is actually a federal standard for how knitting patterns should be formatted). Abbreviations in particular can vary from designer to designer, or publisher to publisher. Pattern layouts can be as simple as a list of instructions in a standard word document, or they can include multiple columns, inset photos and charts. In our current environment, where so many patterns include links to video tutorials, designers are experimenting with QR codes or other ways to give knitters easy access to that information.
So you need a stylesheet. But how do you make one?
A tech editor, of course, can help you with this if you’re really stuck. (I am by no means the only tech editor who offers style sheet development as part of my services.) But the easiest way to start a style sheet is to look at one of your existing patterns, and start listing out how you formatted every part of your pattern, such as:
Do you have a full cover sheet? If, so, what’s on it (photo, title of pattern, your name or your brand’s name, or logo etc.) If not, how do you format the introductory part of your pattern?
If you use colors in your pattern template (fonts, logos, or background design elements like frames, lines, or shapes) what are the hex codes for those colors?
Do you use both metric and imperial measurements in your pattern, or just one type of measurement? If you use both, how do you format the measurements so knitters can tell which is which?
What abbreviations do you commonly use? Do you capitalize your abbreviations or not? Where do you list your abbreviations key in the pattern?
What font and size of font do you use for the various parts of your pattern (titles, section subtitles, the start of rows, the standard body text)? If any of these are bold, italic or underlined, you’ll want to note that as well.
Now, you may realize as you write down all these elements that there are certain things you haven’t been doing consistently (you sometimes use K2tg and at other times K2tog) or that there are changes you’d like to make (you realize you would like to start putting a square around your abbreviations key to make it stand out a little). The style sheet is exactly the place to make those decisions so that the next time you write a pattern, you don’t have to try to remember how you did it last time or what new changes you wanted to make — you just look at the style sheet. If you’re working with a tech editor or a designer for the layout of your patterns you can also share this style sheet with them so they can double check that all of your decisions on the style sheet are consistent throughout the pattern document.
Style sheets are also never set in stone – and probably shouldn’t be! Every type of brand goes through evolutions as design trends change, technology makes new design elements more accessible (for example, its so much easier to take and insert high quality photos of your designs than it was even 5 years ago), and your own personal preferences as a designer change. But having a master document that logs your own style makes it even easier to make any adjustments whenever you wish.
Do you have a style sheet? If you need help creating one, you can always email me for a quote.