The aim of this paper is to identify the linguistic writing paradigms underlying the corpus of six grammarians and five writing guidebooks. To achieve this, first, the paper presents three possible concepts of paradigms: morphological, platonic-philosophical and kuhnian-scientific. Second, the study analyses, under the established criteria of empiricism, conceptualization and explanation, important materials written by Adriano da Gama Kury, Celso Luft, Luiz Sacconi, Napoleão Mendes de Almeida, Pasquale Cipro Neto, Paulo Ledur and Editora Abril, Folha de São Paulo, O Estado de São Paulo, O Globo and Zero Hora guidebooks. The conclusion is that there are two patterns in the materials analysed: the prescriptive one of Almeida, Ledur, Sacconi and newspaper and magazine guidebooks and the descriptive one of Cipro Neto, Kury and Luft.