As a reporter I'm still waiting to for someone to put together a patch for Word that will change the style guides to AP style. It would be great if someone released a similar Office patch for churches, so that it would flag or correct changes in style.

You beat me to it.

AP style is what I've grown up on as a journalist and what I tend to use almost without thinking. I think a style guide is very important for a church to maintain a professional appearance as well as avoid confusion time-consuming corrections, conversations and arguments.

We use AP Style, but I am the only one familiar with it! A church style guide for the staff is definitely a great idea.

The Rock Church in San Diego has one! It's great.

It's one of the first things we communicate to all our staff and ministry leaders.

http://www.therocksandiego.org/styleguide/

This is timely. Our very first church media committee meeting is tonight. One of our jobs is to put together a style guide to be consistent with web and printed media.

Speaking of churches and AP style, churches need to recognize that in some cases AP style means that news stories about their church will use different terminology than the church uses itself internally. In the small-town Southern environment where I work, we constantly get church news items, obituaries, wedding announcements and so forth referring to a clergyman as "Bro. John Smith." AP style won't let us refer to him that way. But we have a number of Church of Christ congregations here who object to the term "Rev." Sometimes it's safer for us just to not use any title at all unless we're sure which church "Bro. John Smith" represents and that he's OK with the title "Rev."

A church style guide is good...but maybe you can start with looking over Power Point presentation of worship songs to look for typos and errors and capitalization errors there! yikes!

--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

Er, I don't know that I'd recommend ES&L. She has waaaaaay too many grammatical errors in that book. When I first read about it (when it came out), I thought I'd like it, but after getting through the front matter & the first chapter, I took it back to Borders for a refund - I just felt ripped off. Though I understand the feelings she expresses in the book!

Otherwise, great post. ANY organization would do well to build their own style guide, beginning with AP (& Strunk & White - the older the better, IMO, but I'm cranky that way).

Can't local papers bend AP style to their will? I always thought AP should be a tool, not a straightjacket, but then I'm a j-school dropout. :^)

RC - word on the worship songs ;^)

At LifePoint Church, our style guide references the Chicago Manual of Style and The Christian Writer's Manual of Style, which helped us address the issue of capitalizing the pronouns of deities (we don't).

In addition to language style, we also use the style guide for formatting specifications (page layouts, typography, etc.) and for citation specs.