Style guide

A style guide is a work aiming to set out rules for writers. In such works, style can have two meanings:

• Publication conventions for markup style, such as italicization of book and movie titles, expression of dates and numbers, or formats for footnotes.
• Literary considerations of prose style, such as best usage, common grammatical errors, rules or suggestions for the most forceful expression of ideas.

Some style guides include:

For the English language:

• The Chicago Manual of Style -- mostly publishing conventions
• Words into Type[?] -- publishing conventions, less scholarly, more accessible than the Chicago Manual
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White-- mostly literary style, American
• Fowler's Modern English Usage -- mostly literary style, British, later editions not written by Henry W. Fowler
• Politics and the English Language by George Orwell
• Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers -- mostly literary style, British slant
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style -- the style guide used for this encyclopedia, Wikipedia

Other relevant books:

• Usage and Abusage[?] by Eric Partridge[?]
• The King's English by Kingsley Amis
• Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson

External Links

• The Guardian's style guide (http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide)
• The Economist's style guide (http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/)