Wikipedia:Identifying and using style guides: Difference between revisions

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== Topical academic style guides ==

Beyond the above, there are few style guides of note, other than for specific fields. Some major examples include the ''[[APA style|Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association]]'' (''APA''), the ''[[Modern Language Association Style Manual]]'' and its ''MLA Handbook'' abridged student edition (collectively called ''MLA'' style), the ''[[AMA Manual of Style|American Medical Association Manual of Style]]'' (''AMA''), the ''[[ACS style|American Chemical Society Style Guide]]'' (''ACS''), and the ''[[ASA style|American Sociological Association Style Guide]]'', etc. Most of these are American, and are primarily used for citation styles and the preparation and publishing of academic papers in journals. Students and other casual users (like Wikipedians) of their styles tend to buy citation style summary guides like ''[[A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations]]'' (often called ''Turabian'', after the original author, and containing also a summary of ''Chicago'' style), rather than the full, expensive manuals. When they offer general writing advice, aside from citations and field-specific stuff, the topical academic guides are mostly in line with ''Chicago'' and ''Scientific Style and Format'' (which is also a Chicago U. Pr. publication, and mostly normalized to ''Chicago'' orthography). There's also the ''[[Modern Humanities Research Association Style Guide]]'' (''MHRA''), which is British, but tiny, being mostly concerned with citations. Virtually nothing in the Wikipedia Manual of Style on general writing principles comes from these works,{{efn|name=titlepreps}} though they inform several discipline-specific line items in some of MoS's sub-guidelines. When working on articles, it is important to remember that [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal|Wikipedia is not a journal]] and must not be written like one, but for a general audience.

There are specialized style guides for law, marketing, business, etc., but they don't have any real impact on general writing. Some of these have field-specific details drawn from them (especially in law) for MoS, but otherwise have no detectable influence on Wikipedia style. In particular, many of them are "punctuation-hostile", and like to drop hyphens, commas and other marks that don't seem absolutely necessary when professionals are communicating with other professionals in the same field, in compressed and highly [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Technical language|jargon-laden]] academic journal material.