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 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.

"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