Editorial Tip of the Week: Church Style Guide

To repent for the tardiness of our Editorial Tip of the Week, we want to give you a tip that will change your life (and ours): the official Style Guide for Publications of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints.

Yes, there is a right and wrong way to capitalize Church terms—and now, you can do it the right way! For only $3.50, you can own this amazing, life-changing publication by clicking on the link below:

http://www.ldscatalog.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10151&storeId=10151&productId=40747&langId=-1&sortId=3&sortOr=1&sTerm=31107&sNVPs=%26beginIndex%3D0%26pageSize%3D200%26searchTerm%3D31107%26searchType%3DALL%26sType%3DSimple%26pageId%3D1%26pageCt%3D15&retURLtext=Back%20to%20'31107'%20Search&retURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ldscatalog.com%2Fwebapp%2Fwcs%2Fstores%2Fservlet%2FCatalogSearchResultView%3FcatalogId%3D10151%26amp%3BstoreId%3D10151%26amp%3BlangId%3D-1%26beginIndex%3D0%26pageSize%3D200%26searchTerm%3D31107%26searchType%3DALL%26sType%3DSimple%26pageId%3D1%26pageCt%3D15%26sortId%3D3%26sortOr%3D1

*Please be aware, Cedar Fort’s style does differ on some points from the Church’s style guide. Namely, we discourage the capitalization of deity pronouns.

Editorial Tip of the Week: Overemphasis

From the Editors!

Last week we introduced you to our “friend” the scare quote. This week, let us introduce you to our “ENEMY”: overemphasis.

And before you laugh too hard—thinking that no one could ever really use underlining, all caps, bolding, scare quotes, font change, and italics all together—let us bear witness that we have seen it. And it’s not pretty.

So what can you use to emphasize something important?

1. Underlining: No. Never. Not for any reason we can possibly imagine. Underlining is so hideous, it's not even one of the options on the formatting palette of this blog. If you use underlining in a submission, you’d better include a stunningly persuasive defense for it in your cover letter if you expect to see those unattractive lines in the final printed version.
2. ALL CAPS: As Chicago 7.50 tells us, “Capitalizing an entire word or phrase for emphasis is rarely appropriate. If capitals are wanted—in dialogue or in representing newspaper headlines, for example—small caps rather than full capitals look more graceful.” The reason is simply that text in all caps is difficult to read and usually pretty ugly to look at.
3. Bolding: Once again, this is rarely if ever an option.
4. “Scare Quotes”: Well, you know our stance on those.
5. Font: Please don’t ever change the font, font size, or font color in the middle of a paragraph. Please.
6. Italics: Ah, finally, a method of emphasis that’s allowed! But a word of warning from Chicago 7.49: “Good writers use italics for emphasis only as an occasional adjunct to efficient sentence structure. Overused, italics quickly lose their force. Seldom should as much as a sentence be italicized for emphasis, and never a whole passage.”

Editorial consensus: To emphasize something, do it with your writing style if possible and with occasional italics if necessary.