1. The Associated Press Stylebook is a style guide that is published mainly for news writing. Public relations, journalism and other classes will require assignments to be written in AP style.
2. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is the best resource available for learning APA format. APA format is the gold standard for scientific writing. Social sciences, health and other science classes will require students to write in this format.
3. Modern language style, or MLA style formatting, is widely used in the humanities courses, such as creative writing and literature classes. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is the source for this formatting.
4. The Chicago Manual of Style Citation Guide (also known as Turabian style) is often the format of choice for students writing history essays.
5. Often, if an essay or research paper is written entirely from information gathered from online sources, professors will ask for sources to be cited with formatting found in the CGOS Style, which stands for the Columbia Guide to Online Style.
6. Biology students should become familiar with the CBE Style, a formatting style developed by the Council of Biology Editors.
7. The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, also known as the “Harvard Citator”, is the industry favorite for law writing. Every law student should be familiar with this format.
8. The Strunk and White Elements of Style gives basic grammar and punctuation guidelines to students in all studies.
9. Common Errors in English language isn’t exactly a format style, but is a handy reference guides for all online college students to refer to when they have a question or something doesn’t quite sound right.
10. The St. Martin’s guide to writing is a great resource for general online classes and offers basic rules that can be applied in any format.
