Books Worth Reading: THE NEW YORK TIMES MANUAL OF STYLE AND USAGE by Allan M. SIEGAL and William G. CONNOLLY

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES MANUAL OF STYLE AND USAGE

ALLAN M. SIEGAL and WILLIAM G. CONNOLLY

Is the deejay a wannabe?

Or does the D.J. just want to be?

When is heaven capitalized?

Do you stand in line or on line?

For anyone who writes—short stories or business plans, book reports or news articles—knotty choices of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and meaning lurk in every line: Lay or lie? Who or whom? None is or none are? Is Touch-Tone a trademark? How about Day-Glo? It’s enough to send you in search of a Martini. (Or is that a martini?) Now everyone can find answers to these and thousands of other questions in the handy alphabetical guide used by the writers and editors of the world’s most authoritative newspaper.

The guidelines to hyphenation, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling are crisp and compact, created for instant reference in the rush of daily deadlines. This revised and expanded edition is updated with solutions to the tantalizing problems that plague writers in the new century:

* How to express the equality of the sexes without using self-conscious devices like “he or she.”

* How to choose thoughtfully between African-American and black; Hispanic and Latino; American Indian and Native American.

* How to translate the vocabulary of e-mail and cyberspace and cope with the eccentricities of Internet company names and website addresses.

With wry wit, the authors, who have more than seventy-five years of combined newsroom experience at the New York Times, have created an essential and entertaining reference tool.

According to Wikipedia:

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's Most Authoritative Newspaper is a style guide created in 1950 by editors at the newspaper and revised in 1974, 1999, and 2002 by Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. A revised and expanded paperback edition was published in 2002. According to the Times Deputy News Editor, Philip B. Corbett (who is in charge of revising the manual), there is a more current, online version of the manual that is used by Times staff, but this online manual is not available to the general public.