A style guide is a set of content rules that rationalizes the creative choices one makes. It is a collection of regulations that are necessary for writing and designing documents. Also known as a 'manual of style', it covers different aspects of content creation like language, grammar, formatting, citation and tone. A style guide accentuates style to improve communication, and adds that extra edge of professionalism to the work.
I. Style Guide Types
Different style guides are used in different fields and genres. The variety depends on scope and size. The short style guide is often known as 'style sheet' (For example 'Cascading Style Sheet' or CSS is a stylesheet language for assigning presentation characteristics to web pages). The long guide is known as 'Style Manual' or 'Manual of Style'. Usually, journals and books rely on a short stylesheet that cascades over a larger style guide of an organization. Inhouse styles cascade over a more comprehensive industrywide style manual.
I.a. Examples:
There is an extensive list of style guides used in different fields. Some of them are:
• 'The Chicago Manual of Style' and 'New Harts Rules' or the 'Oxford Style Manual' for academic publishing.
• 'The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law' and 'The BBC News Style Guide' by the British Broadcasting Corporation for journalism.
• 'American Medical Association Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors' for medicine.
• 'The Microsoft Manual of Style: Your Everyday Guide to Usage, Terminology, and Style for Professional Technical Communications' for web publishing
• 'The SBL Handbook of Style for Biblical Studies and Related Disciplines' for religious study and references.
• 'Yale Law Journal' used by law schools
This essay concentrates on three style guides, The Associated Press Stylebook or Guide, The Chicago Manual of Style and The Microsoft Manual of Style.
II. AP Stylebook 'The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law', otherwise known as the AP Stylebook, is a goto manual for journalism and corporate communication. The guide is used for magazine publishing, marketing departments and public relations also. AP Stylebook discusses the proper use of grammar, punctuation, abbreviation and spelling, along with the basic principles of reporting and editing.
AP stylebook was created by 'The Associated Press' news agency for the American news reporters and editors. First available edition came out in 1953. On May 31, 2017, th latest version of the guide has reached the markets. According to the Twitter handle of the AP Stylebook, the new edition includes 'nearly 200 new or revised entries, with chapters covering business, fashion, food, religion and sports terms, as well as media law, news values, punctuation, social media use and a new data journalism chapter.'
II.a. Content
The book is categorized into sections. Some of them are
• Stylebook, an A to Z listing of guides to capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, numerals and usage. This section which is organized like a dictionary is revised on every edition. Examples: terms like Dr., Gov., Lt. Gov., Rep., the Rev. and Sen. are required before a person’s full name when they occur outside a direct quotation. 2017 addition of food terms are kimchi, avocado toast, Belgian waffle, bone broth, chimichurri, confit, frittata, paleo, poke, ramen and tiramisu.
• Sports Guidelines and Style includes terms, rules and guidelines commonly used by sports reporters. The latest AP style sports term spotted is 'esports' used for competitive multiplayer video gaming.
• Business Guidelines is a reference section for reporters covering business and financial news. The section includes valuable nuggets of information on accounting, bankruptcy, mergers and international bureaus. Example: AP style recommends ecommerce, e book, ereader and ebusiness instead of the more common 'hyphen drop'.
• Guide to Punctuation elaborates on how to use hyphens, commas, parentheses and quotations. The most discussed example is the omission of Oxford or serial comma unless it is absolutely necessary. Another recommendation is that commas and periods go within quotation marks. Example: “I did nothing wrong,” he said. She said, “Let’s go to the Purdue game.”
• Briefing on Media Law is on legal issues and ethical expectations for the media persons. A new recommendation is to use the term 'fake news' for deliberate falsehoods or fiction masked as news circulating on the internet. However AP stylebook warns the reporters from using disputed news items. If fake news is used in a quote, details must be asked. • Photo Captions explain the regulations while writing a photo outline. Example: according to AP stylebook, the names of subjects in the photo must read from left to right.
• Editing Marks with editing symbols. Example: Use '/' for lower case.
• Bibliography provides detailed reference materials for information not included in the book. Example: Second reference for foreign geographic names: National Geographic Atlas of the World, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.
• Filing the Wire with coding requirements and keyword slugline.
II.b. Strengths of AP Stylebook
Over the years, the stylebook has become a reliable source for broadcasters and newspapers, due to many reasons:
• One prominent reason is the shortcuts offered by the guide. In the world of journalism, brevity is the punch word. The writing space is scarce yet one needs to get the whole information. AP Style of formatting saves space, time and money. For instance symbols like italics and underlining are kept to the minimum. Latin names are printed without their accents.
• Almost universally, journalists follow the guidelines of the AP style manual.
• AP Style uses simple punctuations.
• Since AP style is used on a daily basis to provide news and information to the readers, the stylebook is updated every year and is therefore more current and appropriate about new terms and technology.
• The guide has an entire section on media law that explains relevant terms like slander and libel and their difference.
• AP style gives insights on how to approach specific subjects like business and sports from a journalistic angle.
• Like many other modern style guides, AP style avoids stereotypes and unintentionally offensive language.
• Recently the guide started using 'they' as a singular pronoun to represent people who are nonbinary and don't use gendered pronouns.
II.c. Weaknesses of AP Style
Some of the disadvantages of AP style are: • The style guide focuses more on journalistic writing, so for the creative writers, do not completely depend on this guide for your everyday writing.
• Since the guide is designed to follow a specific kind of writing, it does not agree on particular matters with other guides. An example is the use of serial comma which AP style discourages.
• Rules on instructions for creating news articles is surprisingly a small portion of the AP Stylebook. The majority of the book is devoted to a combination of dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia covering the most commonly misused or confused places, words and concepts presented in news articles.
• The guide has over 5000 rules, which requires a thorough reading.
• Unlike other style guides mentioned in this essay, the recent versions of AP Style guide are not readily available in internet.
III. The Chicago Manual of Style
'The Chicago Manual of Style' (CMOS) is one of the widely used style guides in the United States. The manual is a reliable resource guide for authors and academicians. It covers an extensive range of topics from grammar, usage and documentation, to manuscript preparation and publication. CMOS also cites other sources, reference lists and bibliographies.
The manual was first published in 1906 at the University of Chicago Press. It was one of the first editorial style guides published in the United States. The sixteenth edition was released in 2010 in the hardcover and online editions simultaneously. Barnes and Noble editors have recognized CMOS as the "quintessential style book," speaking of it as "an invaluable guide that is considered a standard in the publishing world."
III.a. Content
The manual has three parts:
• The publishing process
• Style and usage and
• Documentation, along with two appendices, bibliography and an index.
The publishing process include books and journals, manuscript preparation, editing and proof reading, illustrations and tables, rights, permissions and copyright administrations.
Style and Usage has nine chapters: grammar and usage, punctuation, spelling, names and terms, numbers, abbreviations, foreign languages, mathematics in type and quotations and dialogue.
Documentation includes notes and bibliography and authordate reference. Notes and bibliography are used by writers involved with literature, history and the arts. The author date system can benefit the science and social science writers.
Some of the significant changes made in the sixteenth edition include:
• The plural of a word or phrase in quotation marks is now formed without an apostrophe —that is, with the addition of 's' or 'es' within the quotation marks.
• Names ending with an “eez” sound like Xerxes or Euripides now form the possessive in the usual way—with an apostrophe 's'.
• When a URL must be broken over a line in printed works, Chicago now recommends breaking before rather than after a slash (/).
• Chicago now prefers web, website, web page, and so forth—with a lowercase 'w'. But capitalize World Wide Web and Internet.
• The title of a work that ends in a question mark or exclamation point should now be followed by a comma if the grammar of the sentence would normally call for one or, in source citations or in an index, if a comma would normally follow the title.
• Brand names that begin with a lowercase letter followed by a capital letter now retain the lowercase letter even at the beginning of a sentence or a heading.
• When an access date is included as part of a citation to an online source, it should be placed before the URL.
III.b. Strengths of CMOS
• CMOS is detailoriented and has a large number of audience. The users include writers of all kind, from a cookbook author to a paleontologist who writes a book on fossils for children to a technical writer.
• The manual elucidates the concerns of editing works of all genres.
• The new edition of the guide has several unique features. That includes foreign languages, software topics like Unicode characters, URLs, recommendations for web content and ebooks. For the techsavvy readers, a primer on the use of XML markup language is also included.
• The information on how to handle punctuation in bulleted or numbered list is not there in AP style, but is explained in detail in CMOS.
• The footnote style of CMOS is popular among researchers who write thesis papers. While explaining from different primary sources, using footnotes instead of inserting information increases the readability. It helps the reader to focus on the evidence instead of being distracted by the publication information. The footnotes can be consulted later if necessary.
• The online version of the guide with a Q&A among other features is advantageous for the readers.
III.c. Weaknesses of CMOS
• The size of the style guide is one of the intimidating features.
• Since the guide is comprehensive, it takes a while to spot the topic that we are searching.
• CMOS is focused on book formatting, so it does not include much information on formatting individual papers which may be a set back for the students.
• There is confusion in the content on indexing in the latest edition.
IV. The Microsoft Manual of Style
The Microsoft Manual of Style: Your Everyday Guide to Usage, Terminology, and Style for Professional Technical Communications (MSTP) is an essential guide for technical writers, content creators, editors and all those who are connected to computer technology. The manual guides you how to write content for a website and to communicate to a worldwide audience. MSTP is designed to aid the technical writers express clearly and accurately about technical topics.
MSTP was first published in 1995, and the fourth and the latest edition saw light in 2012. According to the preface of the latest edition, the new guide is “about standardizing, clarifying, and simplifying the creation of content by providing the latest usage guidelines that apply across the genres of technical communication—1,000 decisions you don’t have to make again.”
IV.a. Content
The guide is divided into two parts: General Topics and Usage Dictionary.
General Topics has 11 chapters:
• Content for the web
• Microsoft style and voice
• Content for a worldwide audience
• Accessible Content • The user interface
• Procedures and technical content
• Practical issues of style
• Grammar, Punctuation
• Indexes and keywords and
• Acronyms and other abbreviations
In a nutshell, these chapters are on relevant topics like guidelines for writing in the Microsoft voice, creation of effective text, video, and audio for the web. There is information about optimizing your content for the NUI and Windows Phone UI, and a checklist for creating UI text. Grammar and punctuation guidelines relevant to Microsoft style that provide resources for indexing content, is also included.
Usage Dictionary is a set of technical terms arranged in the az order. This section includes individual guidance for more than 1,000 technical terms.
IV.b. Strengths of MSTP
• MSTP introduced nontechnical terms (eg: flick, pinch, tap) into the realm of technical documentation.
• The book caters to global audience because it involves localization, global English, and machine translation.
• Gaming terms like 'badge', 'achievement' made their way into the technical vocabulary.
• Inclusion of Terabyte (TB), Petabyte (PB), and Yottabyte (YB) in the wake of the advancement of cloud computing, unlike other style guides is a new step by MSTP.
• The latest version has added new concepts like app, cloud, sync in a simple language.
• MSTP dictionary has many technical acronyms like IM, PC, NUI, and SEO.
• Page layout guidelines for common style problems such as how to format titles and headings, lists, and numbers are there.
IV.c. Weaknesses of MSTP
• There is no style guide available for Windows 8.
• For the nontechnical users, the guide could use simplified examples.
• It might be difficult for technical writers with no software development background to get a grasp of certain guidances like reference documentation and code examples. V. Differences between style guides
The contents of all three guides have crossover factors; but, in general, each is a specialized reference work for its intended profession.
• The AP Stylebook, CMOS and MSTP are used by different groups of people with different writing style. While AP stylebook is the prime reference for media professionals, CMOS is for authors, editors and publishers and MSTD for technical writers.
• AP Stylebook recommends simple punctuations, while CMOS favors elaborate styles and complicated typography.
• AP stylebook has 513 pages, while CMOS has more than 1026 pages. MSTP has 292 pages.
• 'Citation' is a significant feature of CMOS and is explained in detail in the Documentation chapter. AP style uses intext attribution in the form of direct quotations. The 'Bibliographies and Citations' chapter of MSTP provides extra information about citing electronic documents.
• While CMOS focuses in much detail on manuscript and article construction, AP Stylebook is a generic guide that helps to avoid mistakes in writing. MSTP is ideal for software content creators.
• The use of comma is different in AP and CMOS. AP Stylebook suggests “red, white and blue,” while CMOS recommends “red, white, and blue. MSTP also recommends the style of CMOS as 'Microsoft Style'. CMOS uses the serial comma while AP Style does not.
• AP and CMOS treats the names of publications differently. AP prefers “the” capitalized and no italics — The Boston Globe — and Chicago prefers a lowercase “the” with the name in italics — the Boston Globe.
• CMOS spells out numbers up to 99, but AP Stylebook uses numerals at 10 and above.
• CMOS has a long list of uses for the slash symbol (/) while AP Style has a limited number of acceptable uses.
• AP stylebook is used by newspapers like 'The Huffington Post' and online sites like 'Politico.com.' CMOS style is used by periodicals and journals AN example is Kate L Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations. Sites like 'The Daily Beast' and 'Slate' are inspired by both styles.
• Book publishers and authors have months and years to write in a detailed fashion. Therefore CMOS reflects that level of craftsmanship in their content. However, deadline being the buzzword in a newsroom, AP Stylebook sets general rules and relies on the news editor to make sure the details come out right. The users of MSTP should also write quickly.
• CMOS gives more preference to the technical aspect of writing and publishing than AP Stylebook and MSTP. It has an elaborate section on punctuation, quotes, references.
• AP Stylebook is also a dictionary, while CMOS defers to Webster's.
• Unlike AP Stylebook and MSTP, CMOS explains in detail the proper expression of mathematics and numbers in written form.
• The content of AP and CMOS have many common features, but their content is distinctly different from MSTP which has more information on topics like 'optimizing web content', localization, machine translations, cloud computing etc.
VI. Similarities between style guides
The information contained in all three style guides have many crossover factors. Some of them are:
• AP Stylebook, CMOS and MSTP have users all around the world.
• Both AP Stylebook and CMOS have detailed descriptions on how to reduce accusations of plagiarism. The AP Stylebook has a section on 'libel' and 'slander', the common issues encountered by media professionals. In CMOS, there are comprehensive guidelines for distinguishing between ones original work and quotes or sections attributed to another source or author. This guidance aids the writer in guarding against charges of plagiarism or intellectual property infringement. Plagiarism is not mentioned in MSTP.
• Recommendations provided by both CMOS and AP are almost similar, but when they are distinct, the differences often reflect a division between scholarly and popular usage.
• There are common informations on grammar, punctuations and formatting in all the three guides.
VII. Style Guides Comparison Chart
Chicago Manual of Style Microsoft Guide to Style AP Style Book Best writing i. Manual for manuscripts i.Manual for computerrelated i. Manual for news genre and written publications, content creation, technical writing or journalism such as fiction and editing and writing based writing nonfiction books ii. Best for concise ii. Best for detailed writing writing style style Length 1026 pages (2016 edition) 292 pages (2012 edition) 513 pages (2015 edition) Cost $27.25 (Amazon) $14.39 (Amazon) $20 (Powell's book store) Available online? i. Online version of some i. Yes, online version of the i. The latest online portions of the 16th edition latest edition is available to version available is is available. download the 2006 edition
ii. There is a onemonth free access to tools for editors, citation guide and access to Q&A where editor's answer style related questions. Subscription is required for accessing the whole book. Covers grammar? i. Yes. An elaborate chapter i. Yes, as a general instruction i. Commonly on 'Grammar and Usage' is for the technical writers, two accepted journalistic there. chapters on 'Grammar' and grammar rules are 'Punctuation' are included in available. ii. An additional chapter on the book. 'American English Grammar and Use' by Bryan A Garner is there. Easy to use? Easy to use with detailed Easiest to use with content The manual is easy to and clear explanations and available on a finger tip. use for media examples. professionals, not for creative writers. Good for editors? A perfect guide for editors The guide that is designed by With editing tools with information on Microsoft editors is useful for and symbols, the formatting, manuscript technical editors. guide is good for editing and proofreading. news editors. For writers? Nine detailed chapters on Perfect for global webbased Informative for news language style and usage writers. writers including are available for the business and sports writers. writers. VIII. Style guides and companies
As mentioned earlier in this essay, many companies have their own style guides. A style guide helps the organization to have consistency in writing and design. The guide assists the employees and clients to have a collective understanding of the outlook of the company.
A guide includes precise instructions for writing and designing websites, and social media advertisements. The logo, color and font of the company are also parts of inhouse guide. Companies are often known through their signature logos and catch lines, that is known as 'branding'. Examples: The red circle logo of 'Target' or the blue 'Twitter' bird.
Many companies use accepted style guides like AP, APA, MLA and CMOS to have consistent text.
Examples of some of the inhouse style guides available online are:
• The NASA Style Guide • Intellect Books Style Guide • IES (The Institute of Education Sciences) Style Guide • Sum of Us, a Progressive's Style Guide