Style Guide

A style guide is a standardised rulebook that journalists, editors, researchers, and institutions use to keep their written output internally consistent. It typically covers spelling conventions (e.g., organisation vs organization), punctuation, capitalisation, numerals, dates, units of measurement, the rendering of names and titles, citation format, and editorial tone. Many guides also address sensitive issues such as how to describe contested territories, ethnic groups, or political actors.

Widely used English-language news and academic style guides include:

• The Associated Press Stylebook (first published 1953), the de facto standard for U.S. wire and newspaper journalism.
• The Chicago Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press, first edition 1906), dominant in U.S. book publishing and humanities scholarship.
• The Economist Style Guide and The Guardian and Observer Style Guide, both freely available online and influential in British journalism.
• The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage.
• Reuters Handbook of Journalism, which emphasises sourcing and impartiality.
• The European Union's Interinstitutional Style Guide, governing all official EU publications in 24 languages.

For political research and Model UN work, style guides matter because terminology often carries diplomatic weight. Whether a publication writes Myanmar or Burma, Persian Gulf or Arabian Gulf, West Bank or Judea and Samaria, or the Republic of China or Taiwan can signal an editorial stance. The UN itself maintains the UN Editorial Manual and country-name lists (UNTERM) to standardise usage across its documents and resolutions.

Academic citation systems — APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, Harvard, OSCOLA for law — are effectively specialised style guides. Adhering to one consistently is usually a baseline requirement for peer-reviewed publication, briefing papers, and committee position papers.