This editor in this column more than 24 years ago discussed the role of a style in presenting the contents of Oil & Gas Journal to its readers every week (OGJ, June 16, 1975, p. 13).
The definition of style was given at that time. It's worth repeating, even though it barely scratches the surface of what style means in the modern publishing world.
According to Webster's 10th Collegiate Dictionary, style-in the publishing sense-is defined as "a convention with respect to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and typographic arrangement and display followed in writing or printing."
The Journal's editors, throughout nearly 100 years of publishing, have adhered to a set of standards in their writing with very important aims in mind: making the magazine as easy to read as possible, avoiding errors, and improving the magazine's appearance.
Change due
The Journal's style rules have evolved constantly over time to keep up with the language of a highly technical, complicated industry. But during the 1990s, it became increasingly apparent that the magazine's style manual needed serious revamping.
Use of words such as "internet," "worldwide web," and "e-mail"-not to mention the vast array of new industry technical terms and abbreviations-was creating some interesting and heated debates among editors.
As a result, a team of Journal editors, courageously led by Chief News Editor Anne Rhodes, tackled the task of updating the OGJ stylebook. The results of that endeavor appeared a few weeks ago in a 55-page printed book and an electronic version sporting hyperlinks to facilitate editors' searches for specific rules.
The new style makes its first appearance in this issue.
Surprisingly, much of the old style survived. But readers may notice some new or changed abbreviations-Mw, btu, rvp, boe, US, UK, for example, or the use of tonne and tonnes for metric ton and metric tons. We hope all of the changes are so subtle and understandable as to go unnoticed. We believe the more consistent use of updated style rules throughout the magazine will make reading it and absorbing the vast amount of information a much easier task for our subscribers.
In addition to the printed version of the Journal, the new style, plus a tradition of excellent writing, will make a natural transition to the magazine's web site, OGJ Online. If you haven't checked it out lately, the address is at the bottom of this page.
A new size
Another change in this week's Journal will be more apparent to readers-especially when they slip the issue into their bookshelves adjacent to previous issues. The Journal becomes physically shorter this week, going from 107/8 in. long to 101/2 in. Just as our new style is an effort to keep the Journal up to date with publishing and petroleum technology, the new trim size enables us to use the new technology of the printing industry. By changing the dimensions, the magazine can be printed on the most modern, state-of-the-art presses available. The new presses are expected to improve the quality of the Journal's printing, particularly color reproduction.
These significant improvements are just two of the many planned as we head into the new millennium. Our goal with each change remains, as always: to increase the value of the Journal to its readers.
