The Chicago Manual of Style
Countless publishing professionals have learned the details of their business from this classic guide for publishers, editors and writers. It's updated every 10 years or so, and the 15th edition is the most extensive revision in decades. The Internet's influence is pervasive, with substantial sections on preparing manuscripts for electronic publishing, editing for online publications and citing electronic sources. The "Rights and Permissions" chapter is by attorney William S. Strong (The trace the publication process for books and journals, both print and electronic, from manuscript development to distribution and marketing. For the first time, the manual includes a chapter on grammar and usage, by Bryan A. Garner (A Dictionary of Modern Usage). Gone is the 13-page table showing when to hyphenate compound words of all sorts, but it's replaced by a six-plus-page list and a narrative overview, which will be simpler for the overworked manuscript editor ("copyeditor" has vanished, and the index relegates "copyediting" to a cross-reference to manuscript editing) to use. Traditionalists may be bothered by the new edition's preference for ZIP Code state abbreviations and dropping periods from such abbreviations as Ph.D. and even U.S. Some things do remain the same. The style guide still endorses the serial comma (which PW does not) and numerals are still spelled out from one through one hundred and at the beginning of a sentence. Those in the publishing industry will need this edition, both for what's new and for what they will want to argue about.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.