style

A style guide is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. A book-length style guide is often called a style manual or a manual of style (MoS or MOS). A short style guide, typically ranging from several to several dozen pages, is often called a style sheet. The standards documented in a style guide are applicable either for general use, or prescribed use for an individual publication, particular organization, or specific field.
A style guide establishes standard style requirements to improve communication by ensuring consistency within and across documents. They may require certain best practices in writing style, usage, language composition, visual composition, orthography, and typography by setting standards of usage in areas such as punctuation, capitalization, citing sources, formatting of numbers and dates, table appearance and other areas. For academic and technical documents, a guide may also enforce the best practice in ethics (such as authorship, research ethics, and disclosure) and compliance (technical and regulatory). For translations, a style guide may even be used to enforce consistent grammar, tones, and localization decisions such as units of measure.
Style guides are specialized in a variety of ways, from the general use of a broad public audience, to a wide variety of specialized uses (such as for students and scholars of various academic disciplines, medicine, journalism, the law, government, business, and specific industries). The term house style refers to the conventions defined by the style guide of a particular publisher or other organization.

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