style guide

About this sample

When I became the supporting editor for the Combating Terrorism Exchange (CTX) journal in September 2013, I was provided with a style guide: a two-page Word document with few specific rules and several discrepancies. It quickly became apparent that the guide was confusing to editors and insufficient as a reliable source for CTX style.

In October 2013, with approval from the CTX managing editor, I took the original style guide and updated it to the CTX Editor’s Handbook. I started the new style guide in Word but ultimately pushed everything to a Google Doc format.

The guide can be accessed and updated from anywhere and at any time. Editors used the comment feature in the style guide to ask me questions or point out discrepancies, which I could then answer or fix in real time.