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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 [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe]
eBook by Allan M. Siegal & William G. Connolly
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eBook Category: Reference
eBook Description:  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.
eBook Publisher: Random House, Inc./Crown, Published: 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2002
Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT (1.1 MB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT (641 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More., SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT (638 KB], SECURE ADOBE READER 7 FORMAT (1.3 MB]
Words: 125000
Reading time: 357-500 min.
Secure Adobe: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN, Adobe Acrobat Reader ISBN, eReader (recommended) ISBN: 0676806589
MobiPocket Reader ISBN: 9780676806588
 
This manual traces its roots at least to 1895; The Times's archives show that a version existed then, but the earliest one still accessible dates from 1923. It consisted of 40 pages, set in the same agate type as the classified ads. With its pasteboard cover, it slid easily into a letter envelope. It prescribed the credit for an overseas dispatch: By Wireless to The New York Times. (The paper dropped the hyphen from New-York in December 1896.) The 1923 booklet cautioned printers that in following copy, they must make allowance "for the intelligence (or lack of intelligence)" of the advertiser. It listed pasha, pigmy and seraglio among "Words Frequently Misspelled" (raising a question: What were they doing in The Times at all, not to mention frequently?).
Between 1923 and the latest previous edition of this book, in 1976, rule inflation set in: that volume ran to 231 pages, in book-size 11-point type. Its preamble quoted, in turn, from the 1962 revision: "Style rules should be extensive enough to establish the desired system of style, but not so extensive as to inhibit the writer or the editor. The rules should encourage thinking, not discourage it. A single rule might suffice: 'The rule of common sense will prevail at all times.' " Common sense, in today's newsroom, should mean that this book -- aside from its guidance about vulgarity and slurs -- does not serve as a catalog of bans on words or phrases. Indeed, few notions can curdle the joy of journalism more quickly than the idea that rules outweigh the freshness a writer may infuse into a phrase usually considered irregular or shopworn. So if the manual seems to lean on qualifiers like "normally" and "ordinarily," it is to remind writers and editors that one measure of skill is exceptions, not rules. * * * In approaching the mechanics of usage and grammar, this manual reflects The Times's impression of its educated and sophisticated readership -- traditional but not tradition-bound. In several entries on evolving usage (CONTACT, DATA and SPLIT INFINITIVE, for example) the manual abandons the most conservative standard but alerts writers that a minority of readers may differ. In a few notable cases (BLAME; HOPEFULLY; LIKE; MEDIA; and WHO, WHOM), the manual hews to a traditional course while acknowledging the change that is unfolding elsewhere. Many entries also offer examples of rephrasing to avoid stodginess. Throughout, the goal is a fluid style, easygoing but not slangy and only occasionally colloquial. Newcomers will find that while The Times favors terseness (as in the entries on BOARD OF DIRECTORS and ONE OF THE), it uses fewer abbreviations than the news agencies or most other papers. The aim is to avoid a telegraphic staccato: even a terse newspaper can usually spare a word or two to say, for example, critics of the tax rather than the compressed tax critics (are those like music critics?). Nowadays any style manual must grapple with the vocabulary of social issues. This one counsels respect for the group sensibilities and preferences that have made themselves heard in the last two or three decades -- concerns, for example, of women, minorities and those with disabilities. The manual favors constructions that keep language neutral, a crystalline medium through which journalists report ideas without proclaiming stances. That advice takes its most explicit form in the entry on MEN AND WOMEN. (It is worth recalling that in 1976, a more limited entry was called simply "women." Sexual equality had yet to be elevated, at least by The Times, to an agenda for society over all.) At many points, the manual tries to explain its choices: note, for example, the discussion of apostrophes in the entry on PLURALS, and the comments on AMERICAN INDIAN(S). Although a stylebook cannot also be a journalism text or a policy handbook, readers will find a window into The Times's character in the entries on ANONYMITY; ATTRIBUTION; CORRECTIONS; DATELINE INTEGRITY; EDITORS' NOTES; FAIRNESS AND IMPARTIALITY; OBITUARIES; OBSCENITY, VULGARITY, PROFANITY; and QUOTATIONS. The newspaper's preferred tone is addressed in many entries, notably COLLOQUIALISMS and SLANG. * * * Finally a word about using the manual. It is self-indexing. A word that appears in boldface without discussion should be spelled and capitalized or lowercased as shown. Cross-references are shown in SMALL CAPITALS. Many compound words are listed in the entries for their prefixes or suffixes. The authority for spelling any word not found here, and for the word's usage, is the most recent printing of Webster's New World College Dictionary (IDG Books Worldwide). For place names, foreign and domestic, other backup authorities apply. They are shown in the manual's entries on SPELLING and GEOGRAPHIC NAMES. Copyright © 1999 by The New York Times Company
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