Equal Variants

Latent Print presents Styleguide Wednesday, a post each Wednesday featuring an editorial convention from the world of styleguides. View previous Latent Print moments of stylebook study and reflection here. This week features spelling equal variants.

Your house dictionary should be the first resource to determine preferred spelling of equal variants. Chicago 7.1 tells us that the stylebook prefers the first variant given in the dictionary listing. And so prefers AP Stylebook, p. 72.

In The Copyeditor’s Handbook, Amy Einsohn allows more slack. She tells us that for equal variants either is acceptable. “For equal variants,” she says, “the copyeditor’s job is to note on the style sheet which variant the author has used and to enforce consistency throughout the manuscript,” p. 125. The equal variant spelling catalogue should appear thus, if that’s the author’s preference. She lists other equal variant spellings from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate on that same page.

British variants are to be Americanized per the stylebooks above. Don’t leave your dictionary at home. You might need it to keep up with these guys.