Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking (picking individual notes with a single plectrum called a flatpick).
The term "fingerstyle" is something of a misnomer, since it is present in several different genres and styles of music - but mostly, because it involves a completely different technique, not just a "style" of playing, especially for the guitarist's right hand. The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the US. See below.
Music arranged for fingerstyle playing can include chords, arpeggios and other elements such as artificial harmonics, hammering on and pulling off with the fretting hand, using the body of the guitar percussively, and many other techniques. Fingerpicking is the standard technique on the classical or nylon string guitar, but is considered more of an unusual or specialised technique on steel string guitars and even more so on electric guitars.
Read more about Fingerstyle Guitar: Fingerstyle As Technique, Advantages and Disadvantages, The North American Fingerpicking Tradition, Slide, Steel and Slack-key Guitar
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