Wikipedia:Identifying and using style guides: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:40, 12 July 2019

Revision as of 08:58, 10 August 2020

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Style guides issued by government agencies/ministries are usually specific to that particular legal entity. There are exceptions, intended to normalize style across an entire government, with highly variable success rates; examples include the ''[[US Government Printing Office]] Style Manual'' (''GPO Manual'' for short, on which most American government department manuals are actually closely based); the UK ''Guidance for Governmental Digital Publishing and Services'' (for British government websites; too new to assess); and the Australian government's ''Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers'' (last updated in 2002 and widely ignored). There are also some [[International English|international or world English]] manuals for specific organizational purposes, e.g. UN directorates.

Governmental style guides determine (or attempt to determine) [[wikt:bureaucratese|bureacratesebureaucratese/governmentese/militarese]] – regulatory language. They also exert some effects on national legal style (a field with its own manuals), and business writing to an extent (which also draws heavily on journalism/marketing style, of course). And that's about it. No English class is going to recommend the ''GPO Style Manual'' to its students, for example; nor are these works relied upon by book, news, or academic publishers, except for limited, specialized purposes. Governmentese is a quirky style, full of excessive capitalization and a hatred of hyphens, commas, and much other punctuation.

English has no global or national language authority; there is no equivalent of the French language's [[Académie française]]. Government manuals have no authority to dictate style to non-governmental writers, including Wikipedia. We do borrow from national legal style manuals their citation formats for legal cases, but very little else.