House Style: How Society Sets a Story

Every publication has a house style, and most keep it backstage. We are putting ours on the record — partly as a reference for contributors, mostly because the furniture of an article is worth noticing. Headings, quotations, lists and rules are to prose what joinery is to a room: invisible when right, unignorable when wrong.

Headings carry the argument

A section heading is not a label; it is a promise about the next four paragraphs. We set them in the serif, generously spaced, and we use them sparingly — a reader who meets a heading every two paragraphs is being managed, not guided.

Sub-headings are for landings

The smaller heading marks a turn within a section: a landing on the staircase rather than a new floor. If you need many of them, the section is probably two sections.

Quotation is testimony

A pulled quotation earns its size by carrying voice — the moment a source says the thing more plainly than the writer ever could.

A quotation set large is a promise that someone real said something true. Spend it like money.

We never decorate with quotations. If it can be deleted without the argument noticing, it is deleted.

Lists are for genuine pluralities

Prose handles sequence; lists handle inventory. When the items are truly parallel, the bullet earns its keep:

• Keep items grammatically parallel — all fragments or all sentences.
• Three to five entries; beyond that, the list wants to be a table.
• No full stop dilemmas: fragments take none, sentences take one.

Numbered lists appear only when order matters — instructions, rankings, countdowns. Otherwise the numbers imply a hierarchy the content does not have.

The rule beneath the rules is a single question, asked of every element on the page: does this make the reading feel shorter? Ornament that slows a reader is cost. Structure that carries a reader is craft. We aim, imperfectly and weekly, for the second — and when in doubt, we cut.