What is a 'Style Sheet' in Journalism?

Style Sheet is a standardized booklet used as a guidance to follow the rules and principles of Journalism in any news organization. It incorporates set rules to follow in different spears such as the language, grammar, usage of capitalization, numerical, titles, names of months or days and so forth.

The advantage of a Style Sheet is firstly that it creates a standardization of rules to be followed by all news organizations. Secondly it guarantees uniformity in the patterns and style followed by a news organization. This further marks certain Credibility for the organization. It also becomes Convenient for organizations to run smoothly if they follow a set of rules. Most importantly, Style Sheets forms particular identity of a news organization.

Among others, the Style Sheet produced by the Associated Press called the Associated Press Style book (AP Style Sheet) is the most popular and is followed by almost all the news paper organizations, although many of the Electronic media also use it.