style-guides

Scientific style guides

Last updated: 2026-05-17

Synthesis

Style manuals are the procedural memory of scientific writing. They codify the thousands of small decisions — number formatting, citation form, unit abbreviations, capitalization conventions, terminology for human subjects — that journals enforce silently and that authors usually learn by being corrected. The major manuals overlap on the basics but diverge sharply on opinionated calls (Vancouver vs. name–year citations; serial comma; abbreviation of common terms; SI conventions).

For a system like scriptorium, style guides matter at two layers. They underwrite terminology-normalization and journal-style-conversion — skills that will eventually need to know “if target venue is JAMA, use AMA conventions; if PNAS, use a hybrid form.” They also constrain what a critique skill should not flag: an em-dash style preference is not a problem worth raising; an ambiguous statistical claim is.

The most important practical fact: every major journal publishes its own in-house overlay on one of these manuals. Following the manual gets you most of the way; the journal-specific instructions-for-authors cover the remaining differences. A scriptorium that wants to do style conversion seriously will need both layers.

Evidence and frameworks

AMA Manual of Style (medicine)

AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 11th ed. Oxford University Press; 2020. ISBN-13 978-0-19-024655-6. [1]

The default for biomedical journals published by the AMA family (JAMA, JAMA Network Open, JAMA specialty journals) and the most-cited manual in clinical medicine. The 11th edition (March 2020) significantly expanded the chapters on statistics and study design, and revised the language guidance on inclusive terminology (e.g., person-first vs. identity-first language; updated guidance on race, ethnicity, and sex/gender reporting).

Scope: medicine, public health, clinical biomedicine. Citation style: Vancouver-style numbered references; specific AMA conventions for journal abbreviations (per Index Medicus / NLM). Opinionated calls: prefers active voice in methods; specific guidance on units (SI with conventional units where required); detailed rules on how to report p-values, confidence intervals, and effect sizes. Strict on abbreviation use — many common medical abbreviations require expansion at first use.

CSE Scientific Style and Format (general science)

Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. 8th ed. Council of Science Editors and University of Chicago Press; 2014. ISBN-13 978-0-226-11649-5. [2]

The cross-disciplinary scientific manual, used widely in biology, ecology, earth sciences, and general life sciences. The 8th edition (2014) is the most recent; an online edition (Scientific Style and Format Online) is maintained as the living reference.

Scope: general science (biology, ecology, earth sciences, chemistry adjacent fields). Citation styles: offers three — Citation-Sequence (numbered), Citation-Name (alphabetic numbered), and Name-Year (author-year). Journals pick one. Opinionated calls: specific rules on taxonomic nomenclature, gene and protein nomenclature, chemical naming, units (SI), and astronomical conventions. Generally less prescriptive than AMA on prose style; more prescriptive on naming conventions.

Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style. 17th ed. University of Chicago Press; 2017. ISBN-13 978-0-226-28705-8. [3]

The general-purpose American English manual, dominant in humanities and social-science book publishing but not the primary reference for laboratory sciences. The 18th edition has been announced for late 2024 but the 17th remains current in most installed copies. Some hybrid science journals (e.g., PNAS for some elements) follow Chicago conventions.

Scope: humanities, social sciences, trade non-fiction, university-press books. Citation styles: offers two — Notes and Bibliography (footnote/endnote style, humanities-leaning), Author-Date (parenthetical, common in social sciences). Opinionated calls: strong on punctuation conventions (serial comma is mandatory); detailed treatment of long-form prose conventions; less useful on technical/scientific notation than CSE or AMA.

ACS Style Guide (chemistry)

The ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information. 3rd ed. Coghill AM, Garson LR, eds. American Chemical Society / Oxford University Press; 2006. ISBN-13 978-0-8412-3999-9. [4]

The default for chemistry journals published by ACS (JACS, J Phys Chem, Org Lett, etc.). The 3rd edition is now older (2006); the ACS Publications website maintains an updated ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication (online, ongoing) that has effectively superseded the print volume for many practical questions.

Scope: chemistry and chemistry-adjacent fields. Citation style: ACS supports three formats — superscript number, italic number in parentheses, author-year — chosen per journal. Opinionated calls: extensive guidance on chemical nomenclature, reaction schemes, structural drawings, and spectroscopic data reporting. Specific guidance on figures, tables, and supplementary information for chemistry papers.

APA (psychology and social science)

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 7th ed. American Psychological Association; 2020. ISBN-13 978-1-4338-3216-1 (paperback), 978-1-4338-3215-4 (hardcover), 978-1-4338-3217-8 (spiral-bound). [5]

The default for psychology, education, communication studies, and many social-science fields. The 7th edition (October 2019, effective 2020) overhauled the layout requirements, added formal guidance on bias-free language, and updated digital-source citation conventions.

Scope: psychology, education, social sciences, communication studies, some health sciences. Citation style: author–date parenthetical (Smith, 2020). Reference list is alphabetical. Opinionated calls: strong guidance on reporting statistics (specific formats for effect sizes, confidence intervals, p-values), heavy emphasis on bias-free language, specific format requirements for tables and figures.

IEEE (engineering, computer science)

IEEE Editorial Style Manual for Authors. IEEE Publications Operations (ongoing, current edition revised periodically). [6, TODO verify exact edition and ISBN — IEEE distributes the manual as a PDF rather than as a formal ISBN-bearing book]

The default for IEEE journals and most engineering/CS publications. The IEEE Editorial Style Manual is short and prescriptive; the ACM has its own parallel set of conventions.

Scope: electrical engineering, computer science, signal processing, robotics. Citation style: numbered references in square brackets [1], in the order cited. References listed in citation order, not alphabetically. Opinionated calls: abbreviation rules for journal names; formatting of equations and algorithms; figure caption conventions. Less prescriptive on prose style than AMA or APA.

Other significant manuals

• Vancouver (ICMJE Recommendations) — Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, icmje.org. This is the underlying citation form used by AMA and most biomedical journals.
• AAAS (Science family) — internal house style, derived from CSE with modifications.
• Nature house style — internal, derived from CSE with significant modifications.

How this informs scriptorium

Style is not where critique skills should focus their attention. A manuscript that needs structural surgery doesn’t benefit from being told its em-dash style is wrong. But style is exactly where normalization and conversion skills earn their keep.

• terminology-normalization (planned, v0.3). Should consume the preferred/forbidden terminology declared in MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml plus the relevant style manual’s standing guidance (e.g., AMA’s inclusive-language rules; APA’s bias-free language guide). The preferred-terms list in state is project-specific; the style manual layer is venue-specific.
• journal-style-conversion (planned). Needs a routing table mapping target venue → applicable manual → journal-specific overlay. A first cut: detect target venue, load the manual’s defaults, then apply journal-specific overrides from the venue’s instructions-for-authors.
• reference-format-conversion (planned utility). Mechanical conversion among Vancouver, author–date, and superscript numeric forms. This is the easiest style work to automate — citation styles are formally specified — and it should not interact with prose.
• reporting-guideline-compliance (proposed, see reporting-guidelines). Some reporting-guideline items are also style items (e.g., AMA’s statistical reporting conventions overlap with CONSORT and STROBE). The two validation layers should be kept distinct in output but routed consistently in input.

A note on posture: scriptorium skills should treat style choices as venue-dependent, not correct/incorrect. A skill that imposes Chicago conventions on a CSE manuscript is doing damage, not improvement. The target venue and applicable manual must be explicit in MANUSCRIPT_STATE.yaml for any style-aware skill to run.

Open questions / weak evidence

• The major manuals do not agree on serial comma, em-dash usage, or abbreviation conventions. There is no neutral default; “default” is always “default for some venue.”
• Many manuals are revised on long cycles (AMA: 2007 → 2020; CSE: 2006 → 2014; ACS: 2006 → unfinished). Practical advice often lives in journal-specific instructions rather than in the manual.
• The IEEE Editorial Style Manual is updated as a PDF rather than as a bound book with stable ISBN; tooling that depends on stable references may need to track the manual by date/version.
• Online “living” manuals (ACS Guide; CSE Online) are now often more current than their print parents. For machine-readable rule extraction, the online versions are better starting points but harder to cite durably.

References

1. Christiansen S, Iverson C, Flanagin A, et al. AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 11th ed. Oxford University Press; 2020. ISBN-13 978-0-19-024655-6.
2. Council of Science Editors, Style Manual Committee. Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. 8th ed. Council of Science Editors and University of Chicago Press; 2014. ISBN-13 978-0-226-11649-5.
3. University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff. The Chicago Manual of Style. 17th ed. University of Chicago Press; 2017. ISBN-13 978-0-226-28705-8.
4. Coghill AM, Garson LR, eds. The ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information. 3rd ed. American Chemical Society / Oxford University Press; 2006. ISBN-13 978-0-8412-3999-9.
5. American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. 7th ed. American Psychological Association; 2020. ISBN-13 978-1-4338-3216-1 (paperback).
6. IEEE Publications Operations. IEEE Editorial Style Manual for Authors. IEEE; current edition. [TODO verify current edition/year; manual is distributed as a PDF rather than as an ISBN-bearing volume.]
7. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. icmje.org (Vancouver style underlying document).