A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of

documents A document is a writing, written, drawing, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of nonfiction, non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', w ...

. 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 requirements to improve communication by ensuring consistency 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, capitalization,

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 appearance and other areas. The style guide may require certain best practices in writing style, usage, language composition, visual composition, orthography, and typography. For academic and

technical Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

documents, a guide may also enforce the best practice in ethics (such as authorship,

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) and compliance (

and regulatory). 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, medicine, journalism, the law, government, business in general, and specific

industries Industry may refer to: Economics * Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity * Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery * The wider industrial secto ...

. The term house style refers to the individual style manual of a particular publisher 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 papers. 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,'' 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 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

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, journal, or

monograph A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograph ...

series typically has a short style sheet that cascades over the somewhat larger style guide of an organization such as a

publishing 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 ...

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,

AMA style ''AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors'' is the style guide of the American Medical Association. It is written by the editors of ''JAMA'' (''Journal of the American Medical Association'') and the JAMA Network journals and is most ...

, and CSE style for various hard sciences *

AP 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 and usage guide created by American journalists working for or connected with the Associated Pr ...

for journalism and all types of internal and external corporate communications * APA style and ASA style for the social sciences * Bluebook style for law * The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and Oxford style for academic writing and publishing * MLA style 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 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 Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...

, including typography. Website style guides cover a publication's visual and technical aspects along with text. Style guides that cover usage may suggest ways of describing people that avoid racism, sexism, and

homophobia Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitude (psychology), attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, h ...

. Guides in specific scientific and technical fields cover nomenclature, which specifies names or classifying labels that are preferred because they are clear, standardized, and ontologically sound (e.g., taxonomy,

chemical nomenclature A chemical nomenclature is a set of rules to generate systematic names for chemical compounds. The nomenclature used most frequently worldwide is the one created and developed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). The ...

, and gene nomenclature).

Updating

Most style guides are revised from time to time to accommodate changes in conventions and usage. The frequency of updating and the revision control are determined by the subject. For style manuals in reference work format, new editions typically appear every 1 to 20 years. For example, the

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.

References

External links