"Magazine" originally meant a storehouse for supplies -- especially weapons and ammunition. So magazines held a variety of things in all shapes and sizes. For most people today, "magazine" means a periodic publication filled with -- you guessed it -- a variety of items in all shapes and sizes. Today, small is the new big.

Editors kick the word "style" around a lot. Like spoken Chinese, what we mean often depends on the context and inflection. We work diligently to create and maintain style in its various meanings, but like all rules, style sometimes improves when you break it.

Sometimes style refers to a publication's "style guide." Ours is based on the Associated Press stylebook, but customized for different clients. For instance, our clients tend to treat elements like titles, dates and state names in different ways:

• In Semper Fi, which we publish for the Marine Corps League, we use the two-letter USPS abbreviations for states, dates are written 10 November 1775, and ranks are used with names at all times.
• NFIB's MyBusiness magazine follows AP for abbreviating names and dates, and titles are used only on a first reference.
• American Spirit uses its own approach to these and other elements.
• Our own suggested online style guide calls for using bullet points. Sentence fragments. In bold, and no puns (obviously this guy deserves a few bullets).

The point is that every publication has its own set of style rules for consistency in spelling, grammar, even the tense used in attributed quotations.

Then there are times when "style" refers to the overall voice -- some call it sound or tone or feeling -- of a publication. The style guide can have an effect on this:

For instance, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal use titles before names. So one reads about Mayor Michael Bloomberg on first reference, then Mr. Bloomberg thereafter. The tone is more formal, not so much deferential as polite. Quite different from, say, Rolling Stone.

The late NBC political bureau chief Tim Russert, who passed away last week, was famous for the behind-the-scenes preparation he put into interviews on his weekly show, “Meet the Press.” He never interviewed politicians without knowing every stance they’d taken, every vote they’d cast or every statement they’d made on the record. Even America’s most celebrated interviewer, Barbara Walters, doesn’t wing it. After poring through research on her subject, she jots her questions down on index cards, and shuffles and reshuffles until she finds the right order.

Maybe your next interview isn’t with a politician or a celebrity, but preparation is still important because it gives you the credibility you need to connect with whomever you interview. Sure, you’ll run into some sound-bite-friendly folks who are natural talkers and will give you great quotes no matter what you ask. But it’s a better bet that you’ll have to deal with awkward silences, canned responses, hidden agendas and occasional egos—so you must be ready. Read on for five tried-and-true steps we use to prepare for an interview.

• Banner (sometimes called "nameplate")
• Tagline
• Image
• Cover blurbs
• UPC code
• Price
• Date/Volume number

But the art of a cover remains more elusive, more difficult to nail down. The same elements go into a mundane magazine cover and into an award-winning one. What's the difference between blah and wow?

I asked Jamie Roberts, our editorial director, and Kerri Davis, our art director, to give me some insight into the thoughts and planning that go into an award-winning magazine cover.

The good news is that the London company Alchemy Worx has solved one piece of the email puzzle for us—subject line length. According to their research, response rates are highest when the subject lines are in the 50-character range or 80-character range, but they fall in the middle when the length is 60 or 70 characters. To increase open rates, keep these magic numbers in mind next time before you click send.

Hammock has some really talented designers -- and I'm not one of them. So I asked our art director, Kerri Davis, to help me understand what goes into the font choices designers make when they're laying out a spread in a magazine.

I tend to think things I don't understand are just magic -- don't we all? But Kerri shared with me the guidelines she follows as she starts her work. The end result still looks magic to me, but we can all learn from the method behind it.

I took Kerri's notes and marked up two spreads that I posted on Flickr. Click over to see her thoughts.

A magazine article is only as good as its source. But breaking into unfamiliar territory to find the perfect source is no easy task. Where do you turn when searching for a source takes you on a wild goose chase? After a number of trials and errors, we’ve adopted a few general rules to help us find good sources fast.

Here are some tips that work for us:

In the corporate world, design and logo guidelines are standard. Companies and associations set up rules about how the logo may be used, for instance, or what colors are acceptable in company memos. Many organizations will just provide standard templates for spreadsheets, written documents and emails.

But what about your words? Does your organization need a standard style guide for the words in your written documents? If your publications don't use a style guide, follow along with me for a few moments. Even presentations, advertisements and other printed materials benefit from a standard written style.