5 Online Style Guides

5 Online Style Guides 5 Online Style Guides 5 Online Style Guides By Mark Nichol You’re looking for a style guide to adopt, or for one you can use as a model for creating your own personal or professional handbook, but you don’t want to pay for one or more books to evaluate and perhaps use (print versions of the major style guides retail for $20–$65), or you’re done with dead-tree resources (translation: books). You could beg, borrow, or steal a copy, but fortunately, several excellent online style guides are available so that you needn’t resort to these strategies. 1. The Associated Press Stylebook The online version of the AP Stylebook, the bible of US journalists, costs $26 for an annual subscription more than the print version but it features bonus benefits, including email notifications of style updates and access to new entries and recent changes. It also includes a search function and a personalization feature. Subscribers can use the Ask the Editor feature and search its archive, which is more voluminous than the Stylebook itself. The subscription policy includes multiuser and renewal discounts. Print version: $19.95 2. Chicago Manual of Style The primary resource for US book publishers is offered online for $35 per year (with multiuser and government and corporate discounts), but several free features are available on the site, most notably the Chicago Style QA, which offers responses to queries either from the manual itself or from a live (and sometimes snarky) respondent. You needn’t pay for a short-form (but still substantial) guide to citing sources, either, and a guide to preparation of electronic manuscripts and a chart of proofreaders’ marks are also available to all site visitors. The subscription cost includes access to the entire text of the fifteenth and sixteenth editions, as well as an online forum and a personalization feature. Print version: $65 3. The Economist The free style guide for this venerable British publication (focusing, of course, on British English but suitable for Yanks as well) embarks on a sure footing with an enumeration of George Orwell’s famous writing rules, followed by these admonitions: Do not be stuffy. Use the language of everyday speech. Do not be hectoring or arrogant. Do not be too pleased with yourself. Do not be too chatty. Do not be too didactic. Do your best to be lucid. The format is encyclopedic, but the often wryly written entries (from Abbreviations to Wrack no entries, alas, for X ray, yak, or zeugma) are searchable, and some expand with the click of a link. (The long-form entry about abbreviations, for example, is more than 1,000 words long.) Print version: $29.95 4. National Geographic This free online resource from the National Geographic Society doesn’t show up high in search rankings, but it’s an excellent resource. (And, seriously, have you ever seen a clumsy sentence, a grammatical error, or even a typo in National Geographic?) Unusually terse but clear entries are organized alphabetically, and the site includes a directory of new and altered entries and, especially helpful, one of terms and rules that contradict other authoritative resources or are exceptions to the norm. Print version: none 5. Yahoo.com Alone among these five selections, Yahoo’s style guide (both in print form and on the Internet the latter version is free) focuses on online writing, and though concise prose is one of the hallmarks of Web content, the site’s articles are substantial (but helpfully so). The Editing 101 section includes thirty detailed articles about punctuation, abbreviation, capitalization, titles, and numbers, and Writing for the Web features more than thirty extensive articles grouped under ten topics such as Shorten and Strengthen Sentences and Write Clear User-Interface Text. The site also includes a selective but substantial sampling of Yahoo’s word list (downloadable, so you can adapt and add to it), a resource list, and an Ask the Editor feature. Print version: $21.99 Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the General category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:25 Subordinating Conjunctions50 Diminutive Suffixes (and a Cute Little Prefix)What Is a Doctor?