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Traditionally, a style guide (often called a style manual or stylebook) dictates what form of language should be used. These style guides are principally used by academia and publishers.
In such works, style can have two meanings:
Some modern style guides are designed for use by the general public. These tend to focus on language over presentation.
Style guides don’t directly address writers’ individual style, or “voice,” although writers sometimes say style guides are too restrictive.
Like language itself, many style guides change with the times, to varying degrees. For example, the Associated Press stylebook is updated every year.
Style guides used by publishers set out rules for language use, such as for spelling, italics and punctuation. A major purpose of these style guides is consistency. They are rulebooks for writers to ensure language is used consistently. Authors are often asked or required to use a style guide in preparing their work for publication. Copy editors are charged with enforcing the style.
Style guides used by universities are particularly rigorous in their preferred style for citing sources. Their use is required of scholars submitting research articles to academic journals.
Other style guides have as their audience the general public. Some of these adopt a similar approach to style guides for publishing houses and newspapers.
Others, such as Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd edition) report how language is used in practice in a given area, outline how phrases, punctuation and grammar are actually used. Since they are for the general public, they cannot require one form of a word or phrase to be preferred over another, though they may make recommendations, and sometimes strong recommendations at that. These guides can be used by anyone interested in writing in a standard form of a language.
To give an idea of how this approach, it is useful to consider what Burchfield and observers have stated about Fowler's. On one hand, Burchfield notes: 'Linguistic correctness is perhaps the dominant theme of this book'. But he also writes: 'I believe that 'stark preachments' belong to an earlier age of comment on English usage'. Indeed, John Updike, writing in The New Yorker commented: 'To Burchfield, the English language is a battlefield upon which he functions as a non-combatant observer'.
Some organizations other than those above also produce style guides, either for internal or external use. For example, some communications or public relations departments of business and nonprofit organizations have guides for their publications, such as newsletters, news releases and Web sites. Also, organizations that advocate for minorities may set out what they believe to be more fair and correct language treatment.
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