By DARSHANIE PREMATILAKE
STYLE GUIDES
The writing style of a document depends on the writer’s objective, personality, and the target audience. The language, words, and writing voice influence the writing style of a document.
However, in public writing and especially in academic writing, it is a common practice to use a STYLE GUIDE that provides the rules you have to follow during writing, editing, or formatting a document.
A style guide will show the presentation style of a manuscript with respect to spellings, punctuation, quotations, capitalization, abbreviations, fonts, spacing, headers, and footers. It will also describe the citation style, page format, in-text citations, reference page, end-notes and footnotes, tables, and figures.
A style guide ensures uniformity in a publication. For example, when several writers contribute to a magazine, each writer will write in his or her writing style. However, it is nice if there is a uniformity in all articles in the magazine. Therefore, a magazine, a journal, or a newspaper will follow a specific style guide so that every writer will have to follow it.
Sometimes, magazines or newspapers may use their own style guide, which is the House style. Therefore, when you want to publish in a journal or a newspaper, check the style guide or house style that is required by the publisher or the editor.
When writing a thesis or a dissertation, each university or the education institute will follow a particular style guide. So check with your supervisor before submitting your academic report.
Some of the commonly used style guides used by writers are given below.
ACS (American Chemical Society) style: http://www.library.wisc.edu/chemistry/research-help/write-and-cite/acs-style-guide/
AMA (American Medical Association) style: http://www.amamanualofstyle.com/
AP style (Associated Press Stylebook and briefing on media law): https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/02/
APA (American Physiological Association) style: http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/apa
ASA (American Sociological Association) style: http://web.calstatela.edu/library/guides/3asa.pdf
CMS (Chicago Manual of style): this has two styles as NB (notes-bibliography) system and author-date system http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
CSE (Council of Science Editors) citation style: www.libraries.psu.edu/content/psul/researchguides/citationstyles/CSE_citation.html
Guardian style:
http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a
Harvard referencing system: http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/Guide69.pdf
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) editorial style: https://development.standards.ieee.org/myproject/Public/mytools/draft/styleman.pdf
MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) style: http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/quickstyleguide.html
MLA (Modern Language Association) style: http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/mla
Turabian citation style: this style uses both CMS styles with slight modifications
http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/cittur.htm
Vancouver style: http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/vancouver
The writing style of a document depends on the writer’s objective, personality, and the target audience. The language, words, and writing voice influence the writing style of a document.
However, in public writing and especially in academic writing, it is a common practice to use a STYLE GUIDE that provides the rules you have to follow during writing, editing, or formatting a document.
A style guide will show the presentation style of a manuscript with respect to spellings, punctuation, quotations, capitalization, abbreviations, fonts, spacing, headers, and footers. It will also describe the citation style, page format, in-text citations, reference page, end-notes and footnotes, tables, and figures.
A style guide ensures uniformity in a publication. For example, when several writers contribute to a magazine, each writer will write in his or her writing style. However, it is nice if there is a uniformity in all articles in the magazine. Therefore, a magazine, a journal, or a newspaper will follow a specific style guide so that every writer will have to follow it.
Sometimes, magazines or newspapers may use their own style guide, which is the House style. Therefore, when you want to publish in a journal or a newspaper, check the style guide or house style that is required by the publisher or the editor.
When writing a thesis or a dissertation, each university or the education institute will follow a particular style guide. So check with your supervisor before submitting your academic report.
Some of the commonly used style guides used by writers are given below.
ACS (American Chemical Society) style: http://www.library.wisc.edu/chemistry/research-help/write-and-cite/acs-style-guide/
AMA (American Medical Association) style: http://www.amamanualofstyle.com/
AP style (Associated Press Stylebook and briefing on media law): https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/02/
APA (American Physiological Association) style: http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/apa
ASA (American Sociological Association) style: http://web.calstatela.edu/library/guides/3asa.pdf
CMS (Chicago Manual of style): this has two styles as NB (notes-bibliography) system and author-date system http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
CSE (Council of Science Editors) citation style: www.libraries.psu.edu/content/psul/researchguides/citationstyles/CSE_citation.html
Guardian style:
http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a
Harvard referencing system: http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/Guide69.pdf
IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) editorial style: https://development.standards.ieee.org/myproject/Public/mytools/draft/styleman.pdf
MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) style: http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/quickstyleguide.html
MLA (Modern Language Association) style: http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/mla
Turabian citation style: this style uses both CMS styles with slight modifications
http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/cittur.htm
Vancouver style: http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/vancouver
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