Style of the House booklet

[David Eaves]

Has anyone got a spare Style of the House booklet from a British newspaper printer? Maybe they would be kind enough scan it for me? I'd just like to show a copy to some of my junior prepress staff.

I served a 5 year apprenticeship as a newspaper comp/Linotype op in the 1960s and was presented with a Style Book, by the Comp Room overseer, with the instruction that I should "always follow copy, unless it deviates from Style Book rules". Sadly, I lost my copy within the first fortnight!
For those unfamiliar with the "Style of the House" it usually consisted of a set of printed rules for spelling, grammar and typography and was to be followed by editorial and composing room staff. Its purpose was to ensure uniformity. In many instances it was open to interpretation, especially when mistakes occurred when it generated much heated argument between departments.

Great website Dave - full of nostalgia and some great stories.

David Eaves - still pounding the keys with some very state of the art prepress equipment but using the same basic typographic rules I was taught all those years ago.

[Dave Hughes]

This one brings back some memories. I remember when I started work at the South London Press in the early 80s, they had quite an unusual house style.

Mention of streets had to be in the following format: Downing Street was set as Downing-st. etc. Drive, Road, Avenue, etc. had to be a 2-letter abbreviation hyphenated to the name.

I think the style went back many years, and was possibly introduced in the period of hand-setting.

Unfortunately they did not have a house style document of any sort. Styles were just passed oin word-of-mouth.

[Steve Young]

One little snippet I recall from the House Style at just about every newspaper I ever worked on ... when quoting from a newspaper, a cap "T" is always used in "the" for The Times (of London), every other publication takes a lower case "t" for example the Daily Mail, the Times of Zambia, the New York Times, etc, as it is not part of the nomenclature of the newspaper.