Style is more than just what you see. It is the way you see it is the way others see it. Style can be affected by personal taste, by the environment you live in (air conditioning in South America may cause a style called ‘gultures’) and by conventions that are unconsciously adopted by many people for various reasons. Style may even be the result of corporate policy. Style is very much like language, in that it varies from one culture and society to another and is influenced by what is deemed ‘correct’.

Style is a way of relating colours, objects and ideas to each other. Style can be formal, informal, realistic, abstract, or even playful. Style varies according to the purpose and the audience for the style. The most common styles are the following:

Historical. This style is one of the most widely used styles in books today. Authors use this style to associate their works with a specific period of time or to provide specific effects. The most famous authors who make good use of the historical style are Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.

Conditional. Using a conditional style makes authors explain what effects one action should have and what effects another action should have as a consequence of taking the given actions. In English, this type of style is commonly known as ‘condensing’ and it is particularly common in novels.

Dynamic. This style permits the author to describe changes directly by describing how these changes occur, where they occur and the way in which they occur. Authors who choose this style are encouraged not to describe each change in terms of its affect on the characters, but rather the way in which these characters respond to a change. The most famous authors who make good use of the dynamic style are Mark Twain and Jeanette Walls. On the other hand, this style also has a number of drawbacks. For one, using this style requires that the author demonstrate a great deal of skill in word choice, grammar, and sentence structure.

Meta. The meta tag is very useful for authors who want to specify rules for how their web pages will be found in search engines. Authoring tools that support this style include the OpenOffice suite as well as Microsoft Word. Most webmasters automatically include html coding in their website files to comply with the meta tag specifications; however, some authors still prefer to manually insert the necessary code so that their website will appear higher among search engine results when certain keywords are entered into the search engine.