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Style Guide a Style Guide Is a Set of Content Rules That Rationalizes The

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Style Guide a Style Guide Is a Set of Content Rules That Rationalizes The Style Guide 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. In-house styles cascade over a more comprehensive industry-wide 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 go-to 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 e-commerce, e- book, e-reader and e-business 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: ªI did nothing wrong,º he said. She said, ªLet's go to the Purdue game.º • 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 non-binary 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 author-date 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 Ðthat is, with the addition of ©s© or ©es© within the quotation marks. • Names ending with an ªeezº sound like Xerxes or Euripides now form the possessive in the usual wayÐwith 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 forthÐwith 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.
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