What is a house style?

House style is a specific editorial style adopted by the publishing house. 

It specifies the choice your editor has to make regarding the following:

• alternative spellings
• capitalization
• punctuation
• acronyms and other abbreviations
• italics and bold type
• quotations
• numbers and dates
• additional elements (headings, lists, tables, charts, graphs)
• notes and bibliographies

When writing an academic text (research paper or thesis), you need to know which specific style manual to follow (APA, MHRA, Harvard, Oxford, etc).

You can also ask your editor to double-check your text to make sure that you follow the required style manual consistently, especially when it comes to referencing.