A Different Kind of Controlled Vocabulary

I read Adam's post about his difficult element, Relation, and it also made me think about some of the other elements that require descriptions that don't necessarily have a straightforward controlled vocabulary to use.  How do you achieve consistency of description while still retaining the freedom that allows those less-controlled elements to serve as a useful complement to the more-controlled elements?

For example, if Subject requires a CV that limits it to specific words and phrases like "Tackling" and "Quarterback sack," description might fill in the gaps with keyword-heavy phrases describing the play in more detail. The job of the Relation element would be to link the images of this play, perhaps from the beginning of an attempted tackle through another player's attempt to block and ending with a successful sack.

As long as all the image catalogers are using basically the same style for these elements, all will be well.  However, if one describer says "Auburn Right Tackle Smith launches himself" and another says "Tiger offensive lineman number 89 attempts sack" while a third says "Auburn player tries to stop Alabama players by using interpretive dance," then it's not as useful.  And I'm going to admit right up front that that third describer is probably me, so I'm concerned about holding up my part of the job when it comes to actually describing these images according to the rules!

That got me to thinking about newspaper and magazine writing, and it occurred to me that they use style guides.  So maybe there's a football writing style guide out there that could help all of us to be consistent yet creative and thorough in our descriptions?  I looked around and there are some possible choices.  Maybe the owners of the more descriptive elements would be kind to the football-challenged among us and consider making a style guide recommended practice for our digital library.  Here are a few examples, but there are probably more out there, or the owners of the appropriate elements might just list some suggested terminology and style:

• AP Super Bowl Style Guide
• Football Nation style guide
• A-Z Guide to Reuters Sports Style