Writing Resources — Dictionaries & Style Guides

Like dictionaries, style guides (also called style manuals) are essential tools if you want to conform to accepted conventions of writing.

They provide guidance on punctuation, spelling, style, usage, text formatting, and other wordy things. While they contain useful information on language conventions, it’s important to understand that style guides aren’t absolute rules. Good ones provide suggestions—and the reasoning behind them—that can help you make your writing clearer and more consistent.

There are many style manuals in regular use, some of them geared toward specialized audiences, but I’m going to highlight the ones I’ve found most useful for fiction.

Often used in the U.S. are:

• The Chicago Manual of Style ~ this comprehensive manual is aimed at academic writing, but it’s often used by editors and publishers of fiction and other genres in the U.S. The ChiMan style is a bit fussy and pedantic, but it’s an invaluable resource when it comes to improving the clarity of your writing. It’s my main source.
• The Associated Press Stylebook ~ a standard for U.S.-based journalists for decades, the AP Stylebook emphasizes simplicity and concision. It’s updated frequently to reflect changes in society, and the editors send out frequent updates and guides to subscribers on topics related to current events.
• Garner’s Modern English Usage ~ a meticulously researched guide with a definite point of view (lexicographer Bryan A. Garner’s) on many points of contention. In addition to the usual sections on usage, the book includes essays on style and an index on changes in language that traces the evolution of some usages and notes their levels of common acceptance.
• The Copyeditor’s Handbook ~ this guidebook is a simpler cousin to the venerable ChiMan.

In the U.K., the usual suspects include:

• New Hart’s Rules (a.k.a. The Oxford Style Manual) ~ a standard in the U.K. for general writing and publishing, this guide has been around for more than a century, but it’s not fusty or out of date.
• The Economist Style Guide ~ aimed at U.K.-based journalists, this guide defends a distinctly British writing style.

I’d also like to plug one of my favorite language books of the last few years, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. As you may guess from the wry title, it’s less a style guide than the author’s personal take on language (he’s long been the copy chief for Random House), a subject he takes very seriously but treats with great humor. It’s a terrific read, even if you aren’t looking for answers about where to put the goddamn commas.