And, MAN, I am so. freaking. happy. that I no longer have to proof things for a living. Or keep track of three different style guides at once.

Have I mentioned that my new duties at work have included literally hours of discussion on how many spaces follow a colon, when to use a "the" before a court name and when to leave it out, and when to spell out numbers?

I refuse to be bullied and insulted into embracing sloppy writing over precision.

As evidenced above, it's not always more precise. The general application can create ambiguity as well.

The lack of precision is from not sticking to one consistent style; that is, switching from serial commas to non-serial commas in the same piece of writing (or publication). That is inconsistent and sloppy.

And, MAN, I am so. freaking. happy. that I no longer have to proof things for a living. Or keep track of three different style guides at once.

Which is why most publishers stick with the Chicago Manual of Style.

Have I mentioned that my new duties at work have included literally hours of discussion on how many spaces follow a colon, when to use a "the" before a court name and when to leave it out, and when to spell out numbers?

As much as I loved hitting the style council meetings, man, I'm glad I'm out of that.

The best part is I usually end up saying "I do it this way, but I will gladly change and do it your way, as long as you tell me that that is going to be the rule" and then the woman in charges spends 20 minutes going back and forth with herself and then says "okay, let's do it [Perkin]'s way".

Which is why most publishers stick with the Chicago Manual of Style.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Tech, where even within a company, different orgs (and hell, different groups within an org) will find a need to roll their own. (A legit one, with both usability concerns and legal reasoning behind it.)

CMoS informs a lot of it, of course, but once you get into the granular, the style guides leave a body in a constant state of headache from sorting them out.

(A legit one, with both usability concerns and legal reasoning behind it.)

A more nuanced approach?

I vote for coffee.

A more nuanced approach?

Consistent within each docset, though. In theory, all documents belonging to Org X of Type Y will follow the same rules for grammar, word use, and formatting.

Consistent within each docset, though. In theory, all documents belonging to Org X of Type Y will follow the same rules for grammar, word use, and formatting.

Ahaahahaha. Except when some of the style rules for Org X have never been officially documented, and are only learned through word-of-mouth tribal knowledge.