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.

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.

You work with my crazy!boss? She's the one who will, after YEARS of following one style point, suddenly stop doing it without telling us, berate us for still doing it even though we didn't know she stopped doing it, and then when asked why she stopped, will give the answer, "I just don't like it that way."

Crazy!boss trumps any legitimate style guide any day.

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.

That's why I said "In Theory!"

Though I think we still have a Style Council that exists to vote things off the formatting island. I'll ask everyone's heterosexual gay best friend editor on Monday.

It is so Buffista-ish to take over a delurking thread with punctuation debates.