Style and Breaking Style
Great artists know how to both follow and break the rules.
Every book, every paper, every website has a set of rules—a style. A great artist knows how to both follow and break the rules. For example, the image I have chosen to associate with this post is Raphael of Urbino's famous School of Athens fresco in the Vatican. In this image the rules for time, place, and setting have been broken. The great people depicted lived at time periods hundreds of years apart; the edifice surrounding them is imaginary. Raphael attempted to create in your mind the concept of the development of civilization produced by a dialogue among great thinkers over time. It is an image of a metaphorical idea—not a physical place. Similarly, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven regularly broke their own rules—but only to accomplish a purpose. Beethoven broke the rules of symphonies by writing his 9th Symphony to embody a poem, and making a choral performance of that poem the concluding resolution of the symphony.
Every language consists of repeated patterns that can be roughly ordered according to generalized rules. Today, most published writing in English is governed by a set of rules written down in the Chicago Manual of Style. Proofreaders refer to it constantly. However, there are many other style guides which are used in particular situations. It is also important to note that no book, however thick, can really cover every situation. Also, as an author, you may decide to follow any of the existing guides, or you may conceive of your own unique style. You may break any style that you adopt. However,such breaks, as in the painting and musical cases mentioned above, should only be made with deliberate intention to make, or emphasize, a particular point, or idea. Walking into the art museum with a load of trash and dumping it upon the floor as a protest against society, the law, or whatever is bothering you at the moment, is not artwork. Any three-year-old could do that.
As a proofreader, I can help you to ensure that your writing maintains a consistent style—except in those areas in which you deliberately seek to highlight a point's importance by deliberately breaking the pattern. Let me know your thoughts about the style you would like to adopt and any deliberate breaks from that style that you would like to make.
