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 - Hardcover

Siegal, Allan M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812963881 ISBN 13: 9780812963885

Publisher: Crown, 1999

Synopsis

For anyone who writes--a short story or a business plan, a book report or a news report--knotty choices of spelling, grammar, punctuation and word meaning lurk in every line: Lay or lie? Who or whom? None is or none are? Is touch-tone a trademark? Is Day-Glo? It's enough to send you for a Martini. (Or is that a martini?)

Now everyone can find answers in the handy alphabetical guide used by the thousand journalists of the world's most authoritative newspaper. The guidelines to correct hyphenation, punctuation, capitalization and foreign and English spelling are crisp and compact, created for instant reference in the rush of deadlines. Rewritten for the first time in twenty-three years and greatly expanded since the last edition, the manual tackles issues that will follow writers into the new century:

  How to respect the equality of the sexes without self-conscious devices such as "he or she"
  How to choose thoughtfully between terms like African-American and black; Hispanic and Latino; American Indian and Native American
  How to translate the vocabulary of e-mail and cyberspace for everyday readers, and how to cope with the eccentric capitalization and punctuation of Internet company names and Web site addresses

The authors have more than seventy years of combined newsroom experience, most of it at The Times. They recognize that our language is changing, but they tailor their responses to the paper's impression of its readership: "educated and sophisticated . . . traditional but not tradition-bound."

They counsel a fluid style, easygoing but not slangy, the unpretentious language of a letter to a literate friend. They invite readers of the manual to be precise while casting off the stodgy (among dozens of examples, writing before instead of the pompous prior to, and carry out instead of implement).

The authors also offer a thumbnail guide to newsroom ethics and standards in their entries on anonymous sources, attribution, fairness and obscenity. And they seed the rules with wry humor. (On vogue words: "Wannabe is the faddish slang of adults who, well, want to be teenagers." And about the late: "Do not fall into this error: Only the late Senator Miel opposed the bill. He was almost certainly alive at the time.")

For writers, editors, students, researchers and all who love language, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage is an entertaining tool as well as an essential reference.

About this title

Review:

"A foolish consistency," Emerson insisted, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." That may well be, but editors have enough reasons to reject your work; don't let sloppy inconsistencies be one of them. The New York Times Manual of Style & Usage was written for the paper's editors and writers, but it is a fine, up-to-date resource for anyone's use. Our language is ever-mutating, and a guide such as this will ensure that you understand the impact your words might have before they reach print. Should you use Native Americans or American Indians? Debark or disembark? Did you know that thermos is no longer a trademark, but that Popsicle and Dumpster are? Writing, when you get down to it, is nothing more than the careful choosing of words. This style book will ensure that you don't choose carat when you mean karat, jury-rigged when you want jerry-built, chow chow when chowchow is called for, or V-8 when you could have had a V8. A naysayer may bridle against the strictures of such a rule book, but the authors believe "the rules should encourage thinking, not discourage it." Plus, "a rule," they say, "can shield against untidiness in detail that might make readers doubt large facts." We'd call the book "user-friendly," but that, we've learned, can be downright "reader-tiresome." --Jane Steinberg

About the Author:

Allan M. Siegal joined The New York Times in 1960. He has overseen usage and style at The Times since 1977. After working as an editor on the foreign desk and heading the news desk, he became an assistant managing editor in 1986.

William G. Connolly joined The Times in 1966 and has held editing posts on the foreign, national and metropolitan desks, The New York Times Magazine, Science Times, the Week in Review and the Real Estate section. He became a senior editor in 1987.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0812963881
• ISBN 13: 9780812963885
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384