Style Guide: Deep Dive

A style guide or a style sheet is an important editing tool. This is a document that keeps track of all the editing and writing decisions that an author and editor team make.

Photo taken by Jonathan Francisca from Unsplash.

What does it look like?

In my experience, it is a Microsoft Word document. However, it is typically a collection of decisions, grammar rules, lore, timelines, etc. that relate to a standalone novel, game, or series. You can organize it however you like but there are templates provided from the EFA classes and sometimes fellow editors (aka edibuddies). In the editing community, edibuddies may share organizational tips or sections that they include for different genres that they work with. After a while, you will have created your own template(s) that you prefer to work with. Keep in mind that asking for feedback throughout the editorial process from clients can keep your style guides useful to them as well.

For instance, I break down multi-world lore if the characters are planet or dimension hopping and include excerpts in the style guide pulled from the manuscript to keep exact wording consistent across series or within a book.

If I am working on a TTRPG (table-top role playing game), then I am including notes of where style preferences come from and where the creator is deviating from. I also include notes of font choices for each heading level used and bullet or numbered lists.

What does it contain?

Style notes (capitalization, hyphenation, numbers, punctuation, acronyms or abbreviations, and miscellaneous preferences ), an alphabetized word list, proper names, locations, and lore notes.

As said before the genre may influence additional sections but these are the big ones. I often include a timeline and note when character deaths happen as well as who died to make sure they don't reappear some time later without an explanation.

For games, there is notes on the mechanics as well.

What do I do with it?

From the writer's perspective, this is a handy document that tells you exactly what your editor is seeing and reading. This can help ensure consistency in your vision from what you want to show your readers and what they are actually reading. Your editor can help you close the gap (if there is one) and bring your dream to life. If this book is part of a series then when you write the next one you already have a reference of past decisions to guide you and expand upon the world building you have already done.

If this is for a game, then this is integral to ensuring consistency throughout the manuscript from the mechanics to how it is presented to the reader. Often I am asking questions to ensure each section of the manuscript has the same amount of detail as the rest of it.

Updated 10/27/2026