Research paper style guides that refuse to go away

As style guides continue to expand, each edition bulkier than its predecessor, and as copy editors struggle to keep up, it is time to reconsider the role and utility of style guides.

Ensuring that a document such as a research paper complies with the style guide provided by the journal is considered important. Punctuation, formatting, and other stylistic aspects are scrutinized by the copy editors. For example, whether space should be added after a table title or certain words should be capitalized is dictated by the style guides.  

In the article titled "Style guides that refuse to go away," published by Learned Publishing of The Association of Learned & Professional Society of Publishers, the author questions the relevance and utility of the minutiae that style guides insist on. The author considers "whether it is time to reconsider the role of style guides, especially the extent of style specifications" and reconsider their utility in a world that is embracing technology and accessing and consuming content in a way that differs vastly from the conventional methods.  

Citation

Joshi, Yateendra. "Style guides that refuse to go away." Learned Publishing 26 no. 2 (2013):133.

Read the full pre-print article here