Copyediting

Making and Following Rules of Style

Copyediting is a final polish to add to the credibility of your OER. Following a particular style guide will build trust with your readers and help your students learn through consistent design. Given your copyeditor will join you near the end of your journey, it will be good for you to orient them to your project by selecting and customizing the rules of style for your OER review process (see “OER for Social Justice Publishing Review” for full details).

Exceptions to the Rules

Creating an instructionally aligned OER centered on social justice may require you to deviate from scholarly style guides. Below are suggestions to modify your selected style guide to accommodate open education and open publishing. If using a style sheet, you should list any special rules at the top of your style sheet under the style guides heading and specific rules in the A-Z listing.

If you need starting points to customize your style sheet, consult a specialized style guide, such as open licensing guidelines and style guides for your university and affinity groups.

Select the arrow for specialized style guides

Creative Commons Attributions for Openly Licensed Works

While references to copyrighted materials may follow a disciplinary style, referenced openly licensed materials should be attributed following the TASL (Title, Author, Source, License) format. To review TASL formatting, visit our chapter on Creative Commons (CC) licensing.

For our OERFSJ review process, the copyeditors were directed to allow librarians with copyright expertise to check your TASL attributions, though you may hire a copyeditor who fix your attributions.

University Style Guides

To localize style guides to your institution, we suggest using your institution’s style guide for local terminology, references, or anything related to branding. Institutional style guides are based on the Associate Press (AP) Style, which is used by news organizations and should be used for anything published on the web. Below are the OERFSJ institutional style guides. To locate additional university style guides, try searching the web for “the name of your institution” and style guide.

• Loyola Marymount University
• Saint Mary’s College of California
• Santa Clara University
• University of San Francisco

Inclusive Style Guides

You may also want to utilize or adopt portions of style guides. While disciplinary or university style guides are frequently updated, you may want to follow style guides designed by and for specific communities. Doing so will ensure you consistently adapt inclusive language or, in the case of Reporting Guides by the Indigenous Journalists Association, understand best practices for engaging with significant or legal events. Consider the following examples:

• APA’s Bias-Free Language guidance
• Disability Style Guide
• GLAAD Media Reference Guide
• Reporting Guides by the Indigenous Journalists Association
• National Association of Black Journalists Style Guide
• OpenStax’s Improving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Course Materials [PDF]
• Religion Stylebook

Noting Style for Your Reader

It can be beneficial to share with your reader the intentions and reasoning for using specific terminology or other stylistic elements in your OER.For example, when revising The Basics of Health, Wellness, and Fitness (2025)^[1], Jessica Alsup distinguished the terms sex and gender for readers of the health and exercise science OER (pictured left) in the OER front matter. Alsup referenced the professional source for the terms, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and then defined the terms. Doing so distinguishes the academic use of sex and gender from popular interchange of the categories. Most of you will likely write in terms of gender. You may include a variety of pronouns and use the singular “they” for non-binary folks or unidentified genders. If you are working with any terminology that may benefit from establishing a common definition and usage for your reader, we encourage you to add a note in your front matter — either in your introduction or on a “terminology” page.

Image Descriptions

Image 1. Screenshot of a style reference page showing sections titled Style Guides, Dictionary, and Color Palette. The page lists APA and Loyola Marymount University style resources, dictionary references, a Coolors link, four named brand colors with hex codes, four color swatches labeled for different content types, and a note about the pull-quote color. Transcript: Style Guides: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), 7th edition, Loyola Marymount University (for local terms and references), Creative Commons Attributions (see “Attributions” below; will be checked by librarians); Dictionary, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, APA Dictionary of Psychology; Color Palette, Coolors, Jonah’s colors: #436633 Evergreen, #6E9B69 Sage, #7FB6D4 Blue, #AA512E Burnt Red; Learning Objectives: #436633, #cbd4b6; Examples: #6e9b69, #cbd4b6; Exercises: #7FB6D4, #cbdde5; Key Takeaways:  #AA512E, #e8c1a2; Pull quotes – #59814E [Return to Image 1]

Image 2. Screenshot of a heading section titled “sex and gender in this text” in large blue uppercase letters, followed by a horizontal blue line and a paragraph explaining that the terms gender and sex are both used in the text, are not interchangeable, and follow definitions from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). Transcript: Sex and gender in this text; Please note that the terms gender and sex are used within this text. These terms are not used interchangeably. Please refer to the following definitions from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2022). [Return to Image 2]