You Have a Stylesheet - Now What?
You’ve read my post on why you need a stylesheet as a knit or crochet designer, or your tech editor has suggested one to you. You took the time to sit down and write out all your common abbreviations, punctuation, formatting and anything else you want to keep consistent from pattern to pattern; or maybe you paid your tech editor to help you create one (I offer this as well!). You are now the proud owner of a multiple page document with all your style elements spelled out, saved in a prominent spot in your files.
So now what? How do you take that document and apply it to your next pattern?
You *could* just give your stylesheet to your tech editor and let them make sure your style is applied consistently (tech editors check style as a standard part of the edit anyway). But if you’re paying an editor by the hour, you can save yourself time and money by making the style as consistent as possible before sending the pattern to your editor, so they only need to fix style edits you missed instead of correcting the entire document. As a bonus, practicing applying your own style will help you learn it, meaning you’ll be able to write future patterns more consistently.
As an editor who has used stylesheets for over two decades, when I am learning a new stylesheet I go through a few different steps:
Read it all the way through at least once – and highlight the things you’re most likely to need.
If you wrote your own stylesheet you might not think you need to do this step. However, it can save you a lot of time to be familiar with the navigation of the document – is the abbreviations list up at the front or all the way in the back? Do you have punctuation notes under “Punctuation” or are they in a general “Instructions Format” category?
Additionally, if you know you have trouble remembering how you do specific things (like whether you restart your row numbering in each new section or number everything continuously), you might highlight those trouble areas in the document so when you are scanning it for that information, your eye can find it more easily. In PDF and most word processing programs you can also place bookmarks to make it easier to find key info (for my stylesheet clients, I usually create a linked table of contents at the top of the document)
Have your stylesheet open while you are writing or proofing your pattern.
We’ll talk about doing a final style pass in a the next tip, but one tip I have for using stylesheets effectively is NOT to wait until the end to start implementing style. Say you are writing up a pattern and you start typing all the instructions in as “Row 1.” ending in a period, but your stylesheet says your usual style is “Row 1:” with a colon – do you want to wait until you are all the way done writing up your pattern before you realize every single row needs to be corrected?
You don’t have to be absolutely perfect on style while writing, but for things like row numbers and common abbreviations that are going to recur throughout the pattern, you can make it easier on yourself by just making a quick check in the stylesheet to make sure you’re using your usual style. As a bonus, if you realize while writing that this new pattern has a new abbreviation or section you’ve never used before, you can decide how you’d like to write it up and add it to the stylesheet as you go.
Do a final style-focused proofing pass.
I find that certain types of style are easier to check when I can focus just on style – not worrying about errors in the pattern or typos, but only checking for “are all these headers capitalized?” or “does every row end in a period?” It takes a little practice, but doing a proofing pass that’s focused only on what’s in the style guide will help make your punctuation and formatting in particular more consistent. You can also make yourself a checklist of simple formatting checks to make sure you check everything.
Hopefully these three tips will help you get started applying your stylesheet effectively, and remember, the more you use your stylesheet, the more you’ll start to memorize your own style. Still need help? Let me know what questions you have about using stylesheets in the comments!