<p>Where to read up on (the best-practice in) source code formatting, for individual languages i.e. what are the conventions for naming variables etc., for indentation and where to place braces, how and where to include comments, etc. </p>

<p>For example for C Kernighan and Ritchie's book <a href="https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0131103628" rel="nofollow noreferrer" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The C Programming Language</a> and Linus Torvalds' <a href="http://pantransit.reptiles.org/prog/CodingStyle.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Linux kernel coding style guide</a> or <a href="http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Google's C++ Style Guide</a> and for Perl at least <a href="http://www.perl.com/doc/manual/html/pod/perlstyle.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">perlstyle - Perl style guide</a>. </p>

<p>Edit: Perhaps I should have asked "How to get a good start with coding styles".</p>

I wouldn't give too much on such style-guides. They are a good start, but in the end you or your team will develop own coding-styles.
EDIT: Rob Kam made a comment, that he want to find out more about these 'starting-conventions'.
That's a good point. But mostly you will join existing projects, open-source-projects or commercial, and the people working on it already have a code-convention. In a company probably exists already a code convention. If you start a new project, start with the conventions of another project you did before.
If you really start a new project with a new language you didn't used before ... then you might start with conventions of another language that is somehow similar (i.e. for a new oo-language you can use conventions from Java or Smalltalk) and adjust your conventions as you gain experience for the new language. As I started programming in Java I used my Pascal-coding-conventions. Some of the pascal-conventions didn't work very good for Java, but with the time I dropped some old conventions and developed new.
S.Lott had the idea to look into an open-source-project written in the language of your choice. That's a good idea to get some suggestions about good conventions. Srikanth had the good idea to ask for good conventions here at Stackoverflow. A very good idea, because with the time Stackoverflow will become a good reference for coding-conventions this way.