General ⇒ Document Formatting according to a Style Manual

[Singularity]

How can I get a Latex class (or whatever is needed) which will format my thesis according to a chosen style manual? Are there any classes which will enforce the any of the following style manuals:

• American Chemical Society. Handbook for Authors of Papers in the Research Journals of the American Chemical Society. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society.
• American Institute of Biological Sciences. Style Manual for Biological Journals. Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Biological Sciences.
• American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
• Campbell, William G. Form and Style: Thesis, Reports and Term Papers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Gibaldi, Joseph and W. S. Achter. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.
• Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• U.S. Government Printing Office. Style Manual. Washington, D.C.
• University of Chicago. The Chicago Manual of Style. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Thanks.

[kaiserkarl13]

Many of those bibliography styles exist as standard distributions, and the rest probably can be downloaded from the agency's Web site or produced via "latex makebst" if you have the style in front of you.

Here are the ones I know off the top of my head:
* American Chemical Society.
Try the 'achemso.bst' bibliography database. You can download it from ACS, or get it as part of their document class (look in the "resources for authors" part). My (TeXLive) distribution includes it automatically; yours might, too.

* American Institute of Biological Sciences.
I haven't used this one, but I suspect that it will be harder to find---biology journals tend to be less TeX-friendly than math, physics, and engineering journals.

* American Psychological Association.
I think the apacite package was written specifically to invoke this style.

* Gibaldi, Joseph and W. S. Achter. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.
There is an "mla" package that may (or not) implement this style.

* The Chicago Manual of Style. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
There is a file called "chicago.bst" that implements this style through Natbib, iirc.

In terms of writing style, you're on your own---LaTeX won't force you to write well (though it might help by the way it forces structure on you). Even with the statements in your graduate manual, I will give you the following advice: just pick a style you like that is reasonably close (even better: identical) to the style of a journal in your field, and do all citations and bibliography entries by that style. For example, my own dissertation uses a hybrid citation style: I did the authors in ACS style (Last, F. M.; Last2, F. M.; Last3, F. M.) and the rest of the citation in the style for another journal. As long as the style contains all the information that is necessary and doesn't invent anything new, it's usually fine. The rule of thumb is, if someone says, "I've never seen citations done this way before," you probably should re-do them in a way that doesn't surprise them. BibTeX is designed to make that revision step really, really easy.