Oxford Manual of Style

The first part of The Oxford Style Manual contains 16 topic-based chapters of help on every aspect of words in print. The text is full of explanations, examples, and lists of, for example, abbreviations, capitalization, punctuation, and scientific and mathematical symbols. It gives clear advice on how to treat quotations, illustrations, tables, notes and references, specialist subjects, and indexes, as well as exhaustive information on foreign languages. There is also information on recent issues such as citing electronic media, submitting material for online publication, and current copyright law.

The second part of the Manual consists of short alphabetical entries that provide easy-to-follow guidance on specific writing conundrums, including common spelling difficulties (hairdryer or hairdrier?); queries on hyphenation and punctuation (brothers-in-law or brother-in-laws?); confusables (impassible or impassable?); differences between British and American English (pyjamas/pajamas); and difficult or unusual terms.
The Oxford Style Manual really is the ultimate guide for all book, magazine, and Internet publishers on preparing and presenting the written word.

Two classics are combined in this single reference intended for students, scholars, publishers, and anyone concerned with the rules for handling abbreviations, capitalization, punctuation, scientific and mathematical symbols, quotations, illustrations, tables, notes, indexes, and foreign languages. One is The Oxford Guide to Style, which is the revised and enlarged edition of Horace Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford; known as Hart's Rules, it has seen 39 editions since its first publication in 1893. The other classic is the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors—an expanded and updated edition of the 1981 original (which was itself successor to 11 editions of the Authors' and Printers' Dictionary first published in 1905). Editor R.M. Ritter has brought information up to date; US usage and spelling are clearly indicated when they differ from the British. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

In this single volume, Ritter, who worked for more than ten years in the Academic Division of Oxford University Press, has compiled the work of generations of writers and editors into a useful and readable guide. The result is a wonderful combination of The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (first published in 1905 as Authors' and Printers' Dictionary) and Hart's Rules (a.k.a. The Oxford Guide to Style, first published in 1893), which started out as Oxford's house style guide. The lessons of the ages have held up over the years. The first part of the book, devoted to the style guide, takes us from a description of the parts of a book all the way to an explanation of indexing, with stops along the way to learn about numbers, illustrations, and other languages. This section is arranged by subject and is indexed at the back of the book. The book's second part is the dictionary, which provides proper spellings, British English to American English translations, and general, high-level definitions. If your library already owns one of the standard style manuals (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, or William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White's The Elements of Style) and cost is a concern, then adding this book may not be necessary. But if money is not an issue, or your library needs a new style manual, this fine guidebook is an excellent choice. Writers and editors with room for only one style guide would be well served if this were it. Highly recommended for academic libraries and recommended but not indispensable for public libraries.-Manya S. Chylinski, Ernst & Young Ctr. for Business, Boston Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Robert Ritter was an Editor for more than ten years in OUP's Academic Division; currently he is Publications Manager for the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. His wide-ranging editorial experience has been gained in a variety of publishing houses in both the UK and the USA. He is the editor of The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2nd edn 2000), and the author of The Oxford Guide to Style (2002); he has also been a consultant editor for the Concise Oxford Dictionary and the OWLS.