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Most of you should probably stop reading right now. What follows will be of interest only to those who: read the dictionary for fun; keep notebooks handy for jotting down odd and interesting words and definitions; memorize large swathes of the AP, MLA and Chicago style books (because why wouldn’t you?!); and take pride in knowing how to properly spell Volkswagen and the “Procter” in Procter & Gamble…in other words, to oddballs like me.
So, for the handful of those who’ve requested it, I’m sharing the Popular Woodworking Magazine style book (download the pdf below). Note that it won’t tell you why we use the British spelling of moulding, just that we do.
To be fair, I know that a lot of you pay attention to these sorts of things…because you are always quick and happy to point out my nasty and apparently unbreakable habit of neglecting to key in the article “a” when it belongs in a sentence. You’ve also noticed that, with the exception of in a certain former editor’s articles, we now use the word “of” after “couple.”
I have, however, made one (I thought) fairly sweeping style change upon which no reader has commented; it is apparently a pet peeve uniquely mine – unlike “couple of.” I’ve a hardcover copy of “Handsaw Essentials” for the first person to correctly note it below – and no asking for hints from staff members or former staff members, all of whom have seen me mark it a countless number of times. But here’s a hint from me: the edit involves either three letters or four, depending on what is excised. (It is possible, I suppose, that no one has noticed or cared…in which case my little decade-long crusade has indeed been proven pointless and I’ve wasted a good deal of ink.)
