Wikipedia:Identifying and using style guides: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:06, 12 July 2018

Revision as of 11:07, 12 July 2018

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These are the style guides with the most direct impact on formal written English. ''Chicago'' and ''New Hart's'' are the primary style guides of non-fiction book publishers in North America and the Commonwealth, respectively, and also have a significant impact on journals. Well-educated people who write much often have a copy of one or the other (though not always a current edition). ''Garner's'' and ''Fowler's'' are both usage dictionaries (like ''New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors'', often packaged with ''New Hart's'' in a single volume, ''New Oxford Style Manual''), and are popular with well-read everyday people as well as professional writers/editors. Cambridge University Press puts one out too, but ''The Cambridge Guide to English Usage'' dates to 2004, is rarely cited, and is primarily for [[English as a second language|ESL]] learners.

Wikipedia's Manual of Style also relies heavily on ''[[Scientific Style and Format]]'' for medical, science, and other technical topics; e.g. it is's where most of our advice on units of measure comes from. This is put together by a multi-disciplinary body of science writers from all over the [[anglosphere]]. It was formerly published in the UK, and leaned British for basic typographical matters, but the last few editions have been published in the US by the University of Chicago Press, and been normalized to an extent to ''Chicago'' style on such matters, without affecting the technical advice.

For citations in articles: Highly reputable, organizationally published style guides, like ''Chicago'' and ''New Hart's / Oxford'', are a mixture of [[Wikipedia:No original research#Primary, secondary and tertiary sources|primary, secondary, and tertiary sourcing]]. They are often explicit that they are offering an opinion which may conflict with other style guides and which is not based on generally accepted norms, but attempting to establish one; this is primary. In other cases, they explicitly defer to other named sources' consensus on a matter; this is secondary. When they simply aggregate and repeat what almost all style writers agree on (e.g., start a sentence with a capital letter absent some special reason not to like a trademark that starts with a digit), then they are high-quality tertiary sources. ''Scientific Style and Format'' is mostly tertiary, and generally provides consistent advice with that of more discipline-specific manuals from professional bodies in chemistry, medicine, and other scientific fields {{crossref|printworthy=y|(see [[#Topical academic style guides|below]])}}.