Style Guides

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Style guides (or style manuals) are prevalent for general and specialized usage, for the general reading and writing audience, and for students and scholars of the various academia disciplines, medicine, journalism, the law, government, business, and industry.

Publishing house style guides outline standards for design and writing for a specific publication or organization. Some focus on graphic design, covering such topics as typography and white space. Web site style guides focus on a publication's visual and technical aspects, prose style, best usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and fairness.

Editions Many style guides are revised periodically to accommodate changes in conventions and usage. For example, the stylebook of the Associated Press is updated annually.

Academia and publishing Publishers' style guides establish house rules for language usages, such as spelling, italics, and punctuation; consistency is the major purpose of these style guides. They are rulebooks for writers, ensuring consistent language. Authors are asked or required to use a style guide in preparing their work for publication; Copy editing are charged with enforcing the publishing house's style.

Academic organization and university style guides are rigorous about documentation formatting style for citations and bibliography used for preparing term papers for course credit and manuscripts for publication. Professional scholars are advised to follow the style guides of organizations in their disciplines when they submit articles and books to academic journals and academic book publishers in those disciplines for consideration of publication. Once they have accepted work for publication, publishers provide authors with their own guidelines and specifications, which may differ from those required for submissions, and editors may assist authors in preparing their work for press. (Indexing, which can be a tedious task, is done either by the author for his or her own work, resulting in its being "self-indexed", or by a professional editorial indexer.)

General interest The general public is the audience for some style guides; these may adopt the approaches of publishing houses and newspapers. Others, such as Fowler's Modern English Usage, 3rd ed., report how language is practiced in a given area and outline how phrases, punctuation, and grammar are actually used.

About Fowler's Modern English Usage Robert Burchfield states: "Linguistic correctness is perhaps the dominant theme of this book," adding the following qualification: "I believe that 'stark preachments' belong to an earlier age of comment on English usage." Commenting in the The New Yorker (magazine), John Updike observes: "To Burchfield, the English language is a battlefield upon which he functions as a non-combatant observer."

Specialized guides Some organizations other than the aforementioned ones produce style guides for either internal or external use. For example, communications and public relations departments of business and nonprofit organizations have style guides for their publications (newsletters, news releases, Web sites), and organizations advocating for social minorities establish what they believe to be fair and correct language treatment of their audiences.

Graphic design style guides Many publications (notably newspapers) use graphic design style guides to demonstrate the preferred layout and formatting of a published page. They often are extremely detailed in specifying, for example, which fonts and colours to use. Such guides allow a large design team to produce visually consistent work for the organization.

Examples of style guides International standards Several basic style guides for technical and scientific communication have been defined by international standards organizations. These are often used as elements of and refined in more specialized style guides that are specific to a subject, region or organization. Some examples are:

ISO 8 — Presentation of scientific journals
ISO 18 — Contents lists of periodicals
ISO 31 — physical quantities & physical units
ISO 214 — Abstracts for publication & documentation
ISO 215 — Presentation of contributions to periodicals & other serials
ISO 690 — Bibliographic references — Content, form & structure
ISO 832 — Bibliographic references — Abbreviations of typical words

ISO 999 — Index of a publication
ISO 1086 — Title leaves of a book
ISO 2145 — Numbering of divisions & subdivisions in written documents
ISO 5966 — Presentation of scientific & technical reports
ISO 6357 — spine (book) titles on books & other publications
ISO 7144 — Presentation of thesis & similar documents
ISO 9241 — Ergonomics of Human System Interaction
EN-15038:2006 — Draft European Standard for Translation Services Annex D (informative)

Canada Newspapers

CP Stylebook: Guide to newspaper style in Canada maintained by the Canadian Press. ISBN 0920009387.
The Globe and Mail Style Book: Originally created to help writers and editors at the Globe and Mail present clear, accurate, and concise stories. ISBN 0771056850

United Kingdom General

Fowler's Modern English Usage. Ed. R. W. Burchfield. Rev. 3rd ed. London: Clarendon Press, 2004. ISBN 0-19-861021-1 (hardcover). Based on Fowler's Modern English Usage, by Henry Watson Fowler.
The King's English, by Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler.
The Oxford Style Manual (2003 ed.). Combines Hart's Rules and The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, which concentrates on common problems.
Plain Words, by Ernest Gowers.
Usage and Abusage, by Eric Partridge.

Journalism

The BBC News Style Guide. British Broadcasting Corporation.
The Economist Style Guide: from The Economist (United Kingdom).
The Guardian Style Guide: from The Guardian (United Kingdom)
The Times Style and Usage Guide. The Times.

United States In the United States, the two most widely-used style guides are the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Most newspapers base their styles upon the Associated Press but also have their own style guides for local terms and individual preferences. The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, is considered a classic style guide for the general public, and remains a popular book in high schools and college bookstores.

General writing style guides

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right. By Bill Bryson.
The Classics of Style. The American Academic Press, 2006. ISBN 0-9787282-0-3. Presents writing guidance from William Strunk, Jr., Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and other writers.
The Elements of Style. By William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White. (Often referred to as "Strunk and White".)

Editorial style guides on preparing a manuscript for publication

The Chicago Manual of Style. Pref. Margaret Mahan. 15th ed. University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN 0-226-10403-6 (hardcover).
Words into Type. By Marjorie E. Skillin, Robert M. Gay, et al. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1974. ISBN 0139642625 (10). ISBN 978-0139642623 (13).

Legal style guides

Bluebook. New York: Harvard Law Review Association in conjunction with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal.

Journalistic style guides

AP Stylebook. Foremost guide to newspaper style in the United States maintained by the Associated Press (AP).
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. Eds. Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. Rev. ed. New York: Times Books, 1999. ISBN 0-8129-6388-1.
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Business Style and Usage. Ed. Paul R. Martin (editor). New York: Free Press, 2002. ISBN 0743212959 (10). ISBN 978-0743212953 (13).

Electronic publishing style guides

The Columbia Guide to Online Style. By Janice Walker and Todd Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-231-10789-7 (paperback). ISBN 0-231-10788-9 (hardback).
Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites. 2nd ed. B Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Computer industry (software and hardware) style guides

Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry. 2nd ed. Sun Technical Publications/Prentice Hall, 2003. ISBN 0-13-142899-3. Provides comprehensive guidelines for documenting computer products, from writing about web sites to legal guidelines, from writing for an international audience, to developing a documentation department.
Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications. Microsoft Press. 2003. 3rd ed. (Book and CD). ISBN 0-7356-1746-5. Provides a style standard for technical documentation, including: use of terminology; conventions, procedure, and design treatments; and punctuation and grammar usage.

Academic

ACS style. Style for scientific papers published in journals of the American Chemical Society.
American Medical Association Manual of Style. Style for scientific papers published in journals of the American Medical Association.
ASA style. Academic style for the social sciences by the American Sociological Association.
APA style. Academic style for the social sciences by the American Psychological Association.
The Chicago Manual of Style. Style required by some academic publishers for books and journal publications. (See "Editorial style guides" above.)
Geoscience Reporting Guidelines. Style and guidelines for writers & editors of geoscience reports (in industry, academic, and other disciplines).
MHRA Style Guide: academic style for the arts and humanities published by the Modern Humanities Research Association; available for free download (see article); based in the United Kingdom.
MLA Style Manual and MLA Style Manual. Academic style for the arts and humanities by the Modern Language Association of America.
Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 7th ed. Style for scientific papers published by the Council of Science Editors (CSE), a group formerly known as the Council of Biology Editors (CBE).
The Style Manual for Political Science. Academic style used by many American political science journals, published by the American Political Science Association.
Turabian refers to A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, by Kate L. Turabian, the graduate school dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. The school required her approval for every master's thesis and doctoral dissertation. Her stylistic rules closely follow those in The Chicago Manual of Style, although there are differences (See Turabian).