Authored by Madelyn Huff, UNG Press Intern
Style guides are guides that dictate how a writing piece should be written. Style guides create guidelines for page formatting, citation style, spelling choice, and more. This practice establishes a familiarity that can be traced throughout all documents that utilize the particular guide. This post will emphasize the purpose of style guides and why they matter from a publishing standpoint, and outline three prominent style guides: MLA, Chicago Manual of Style, and AP.
Purpose in Publishing
The Purdue OWL details how style guides ensure consistency across all documents “written by many writers, in many places, and in many circumstances.” Various fields and industries subscribe to a primary style guide that makes documents produced in that genre similar and cohesive. From a reader’s perspective, formatting guidelines that style guides create allow audiences to make connections between what they see on the paper and the broader field before even having to digest the content.
Style guides are very important in publishing during the editorial process and for demonstrating audience awareness. It is common for authors to write with a style guide that the publisher does not follow. The manuscript will undergo edits focused on aligning the manuscript with the publisher’s chosen guide. Copyediting is the editing stage that most closely focuses on adherence to style guides (Schmidt).
Publishers also need style guides to demonstrate their audience awareness. Authors and editors should consider that readers in a particular discipline or genre are accustomed to reading pieces produced in a specific way under the jurisdiction of a specific style guide. For example, you wouldn’t write a medical document using MLA format because it would generally confuse readers who are used to seeing medical documents in AMA (American Medical Association) format.
Types of Style Guides
Below are brief overviews of three popular style guides. Which have you used? Which do you like the most?
Modern Language Association (MLA) Format
The MLA style guide is primarily used for “formatting research and citing research” in writing (Purdue OWL). Primary users include humanities students and researchers (Scribbr). Features of this guide include double-spacing, 12-point font, a “Works Cited” page, and in-text citations follow an “(Author Last Name, page number)” format.
Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS)
Where MLA is heavily used for academic papers, CMoS is preferred for published works (Purdue OWL). The UNG Press follows CMoS! This style guide is considered the “standard” in book publishing and was one of the first style guides to be published in book form (Witynski). Because of this, the guide’s primary user base consists of writer, editors, publishers, and more professionals working with published bodies of text (Witynski). A characteristic of the Chicago Manual of Style is its flexibility; the guide understands the complexities of writing and how rules are often meant to be bent (Witynski). This guide uses endnotes, footnotes, and a bibliography to note sources that correspond to a superscript number in the text. The guide follows the Merriam-Webster dictionary for its spelling guidelines.
Associated Press (AP)
The AP style guide is majorly used for news writing and journalistic reporting. Because news content is often the product of many different voices coming together; AP style creates guidelines centered on consistency, clarity, brevity, and conciseness (Purdue OWL). A feature of AP style is datelines, a line at the end of an article that details the publication date and the city.
Final Thoughts
Mastering a style guide takes practice. Even veteran writers and editors find it useful to keep an updated copy of their preferred guide on hand. Remember, each guide corresponds to a specific field, and this relation makes it easier to recognize a genre.
Works Cited
“Associated Press Style.” Purdue OWL, Purdue University, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journalism_and_journalistic_writing/ap_style.html. Accessed Mar. 2026.
“General Format.” Purdue OWL, Purdue University, owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html. Accessed Mar. 2026.
“MLA General Format.” Purdue OWL, Purdue University, owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_general_format.html. Accessed Mar. 2026.
Schmidt, Kaitlin. “Stages of Editing.” Kaitlin’s Newsletter, Substack, 19 Aug. 2024, kaitlinschmidt.substack.com/p/stages-of-editing.
“Style Guide Overview.” Purdue OWL, Purdue University, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/avoiding_plagiarism/guide_overview%20.html. Accessed Mar. 2026.
“Who Uses MLA Style?” Scribbr, www.scribbr.com/frequently-asked-questions/who-uses-mla-style/. Accessed Mar. 2026.
Witynski, Max. “The Chicago Manual of Style, Explained.” UChicago New, University of Chicago, 11 Mar. 2025, news.uchicago.edu/explainer/chicago-manual-style-explained.
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