A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing,
formatting, and design of
documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has
multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for general use, or be required usage for an individual publication, a particular organization, or a specific field.
A style guide establishes standard
style
Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to:
* Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable
* Design, the process of creating something
* Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...
requirements to improve
communication
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...
by ensuring
consistency
In classical deductive logic, a consistent theory is one that does not lead to a logical contradiction. The lack of contradiction can be defined in either semantic or syntactic terms. The semantic definition states that a theory is consistent ...
both within a document, and across multiple documents. Because practices vary, a style guide may set out standards to be used in areas such as
punctuation
Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
,
capitalization
Capitalization (American English) or capitalisation (British English) is writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter (uppercase letter) and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term ...
,
citing sources
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...
, formatting of numbers and dates,
table
Table may refer to:
* Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs
* Table (landform), a flat area of land
* Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns
* Table (database), how the table data ...
appearance and other areas. The style guide may require certain
best practice
A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to other known alternatives because it often produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing ...
s in
writing style
In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. As Bryan Ray notes, however, style is a broader concern, one that can describe "readers' relationships with, t ...
,
usage
The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a language ...
,
language composition,
visual composition,
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
, and
typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), ...
. For
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
and
technical documents, a guide may also enforce the best practice in
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
(such as
authorship
An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states:
"''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
,
research ethics
Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
, and
disclosure
Disclosure may refer to:
Arts and media
* ''Disclosure'' (The Gathering album), 2012
*Disclosure (band), a UK-based garage/electronic duo
* ''Disclosure'' (novel), 1994 novel written by Michael Crichton
** ''Disclosure'' (1994 film), an American ...
) and compliance (
technical and
regulatory
Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...
). For translations, a style guide may be used to enforce consistent grammar choices such as tenses, formality levels in tones, and localization decisions such as units of measurements.
Style guides are specialized in a variety of ways, from the general use of a broad public audience, to a wide variety of specialized uses, such as for students and scholars of various
academic disciplines
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...
,
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...
,
journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...
, the
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
,
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...
, business in general, and specific
industries. The term house style refers to the individual style manual of a particular
publisher
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
or organization.
Varieties
Style guides vary widely in scope and size, and writers working in most large industries or professional sectors reference a specific style guide, written for their industry or sector when writing very specialized document types. These guides are useful primarily for only peer-to-peer specialist documentation or to help writers working in specific industries and/or sectors communicate highly technical information in scholarly articles or industry
white paper
A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. A white pape ...
s.
Notable exceptions are ''
The Associated Press Stylebook
The ''AP Stylebook'', also known by its full name ''The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law'', is an American English grammar style guide, style and usage guide created by American journalists working for or connected with the A ...
'' and ''
The Chicago Manual of Style
''The Chicago Manual of Style'' (abbreviated in writing as ''CMOS'' or ''CMS'', or sometimes as ''Chicago'') is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 17 editions have prescribed writi ...
,'' both of which focus on "general", third-person English. ''The Associated Press Stylebook'' is written for journalists, and ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' is written for academic writing.
Sizes
This variety in scope and length is enabled by the cascading of one style over another, in a way analogous to how styles cascade
in web development and
in desktop cascade over
CSS styles.
A short style guide is often called a ''style sheet''. A comprehensive guide tends to be long and is often called a ''style manual'' or ''manual of style'' (''MOS'' or ''MoS''). In many cases, a project such as one
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...
,
journal
A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to:
*Bullet journal, a method of personal organization
*Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period
*Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...
, or
monograph series typically has a short style sheet that cascades over the somewhat larger style guide of an organization such as a
publishing company, whose content is usually called ''house style''. Most house styles, in turn, cascade over an ''industry-wide or profession-wide style manual'' that is even more comprehensive. Some examples of these industry style guides include the following:
*
ACS style
The ACS Style is a set of standards for writing documents relating to chemistry, including a standard method of citation in academic journal, academic publications, developed by the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Previous editions of the ACS ...
,
AMA style, and
CSE style
The Council of Science Editors (CSE), formerly the Council of Biology Editors (CBE; 1965–2000) and originally the Conference of Biology Editors (CBE; 1957–1965), is a United States-based nonprofit organization that supports editorial practic ...
for various
hard science
Hard science and soft science are colloquial terms used to compare scientific fields on the basis of perceived methodological rigor, exactitude, and objectivity. Roughly speaking, the formal sciences & natural sciences are considered "hard", wher ...
s
*
AP Stylebook for journalism and all types of internal and external corporate communications
*
APA style
APA style (also known as APA format) is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences, including sociol ...
and
ASA style
ASA as an abbreviation or initialism may refer to:
Biology and medicine
* Accessible surface area of a biomolecule, accessible to a solvent
* Acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin
* Advanced surface ablation, refractive eye surgery
* Anterior spinal ar ...
for the social sciences
*
Bluebook
''The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation'' is a style guide that prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States. It is taught and used at a majority of U.S. law schools and is also used in a majority of federal ...
style for law
*
The Chicago Manual of Style
''The Chicago Manual of Style'' (abbreviated in writing as ''CMOS'' or ''CMS'', or sometimes as ''Chicago'') is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 17 editions have prescribed writi ...
(CMOS) and
Oxford style for academic writing and publishing
*
MLA style
''MLA Handbook'' (9th ed., 2021), formerly ''MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers'' (1977–2009), establishes a system for documenting sources in scholarly writing. It is published by the Modern Language Association, which is based in the ...
for language and literature studies, and normatively in
American secondary education
*
USGPO style and
AGPS style for government publications
Finally, these reference works cascade over the
orthographic norms of the language in use (for example,
English orthography
English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and ...
for English-language publications). This, of course, may be subject to national variety, such as
the different varieties of American English and British English.
Topics
Some style guides focus on specific topic areas such as
graphic design, including
typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), ...
. Website style guides cover a publication's visual and technical aspects along with text.
Style guides that cover
usage
The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a language ...
may suggest ways of describing people that avoid
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonis ...
,
sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers pri ...
, and
homophobia. Guides in specific scientific and technical fields cover
nomenclature
Nomenclature (, ) is a system of names or terms, or the rules for forming these terms in a particular field of arts or sciences. The principles of naming vary from the relatively informal conventions of everyday speech to the internationally ag ...
, which specifies names or classifying labels that are preferred because they are clear, standardized, and
ontologically
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
sound (e.g.,
taxonomy
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
,
chemical nomenclature, and
gene nomenclature
Gene nomenclature is the scientific naming of genes, the units of heredity in living organisms. It is also closely associated with protein nomenclature, as genes and the proteins they code for usually have similar nomenclature. An international co ...
).
Updating
Most style guides are revised from time to time to accommodate changes in conventions and
usage
The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a language ...
. The frequency of updating and the
revision control
In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...
are determined by the subject. For style manuals in
reference work
A reference work is a work, such as a paper, book or periodical (or their electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information is intended to be found quickly when needed. Such works are usually ''referred'' to ...
format, new
editions
Edition may refer to:
* Edition (book), a bibliographical term for a substantially similar set of copies
* Edition (printmaking), a publishing term for a set print run
* Edition (textual criticism), a particular version of a text
* Edition Recor ...
typically appear every 1 to 20 years. For example, the
AP Stylebook is revised annually, and, as of 2021, the Chicago, APA, and ASA manuals are in their 17th, 7th, and 4th editions, respectively. Many house styles and individual project styles change more frequently, especially for new projects.
See also
*
Citation style
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...
*
Graphic charter
A graphic charter is a document containing the rules regarding the graphic identity of a project, company or organisation. It represents a broadening of the entity's visual identity beyond printed matter and signage to encompass media platforms ...
*
Diction
Diction ( la, dictionem (nom. ), "a saying, expression, word"), in its original meaning, is a writer's or speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story.Crannell (1997) ''Glossary'', p. 406 In its common meanin ...
*
Documentation
*
Disputed usage
*
English writing style An English writing style is a combination of features in an English language composition that has become characteristic of a particular writer, a genre, a particular organization, or a profession more broadly (e.g., legal writing).
An individual's ...
*
List of style guides
*
Prescription and description
Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes infor ...
*
Sentence spacing in language and style guides
Sentence spacing guidance is provided in many language and style guides. The majority of style guides that use a Latin-derived alphabet as a language base now prescribe or recommend the use of a single space after the concluding punctuation of a ...
*
Spelling
Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is one ...
*
Style sheet (disambiguation)
References
External links
But the stylebook says ...– Blog post about stylebook abuse, by
Bill Walsh of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''
* Handouts about writing style guides, from a conference of the
American Copy Editors Society
ACES: The Society for Editing is a professional association of international scope for editors who work on every kind of content (media), content, including newspapers, magazines, websites, books, academic journal, scholarly journals, and corpora ...
in 2007
**
**
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