The Oxford Style Manual

If you don't know the en or em rules or how to use your solidus or vertical (aka--a standard abbreviation which needs no punctuation--as a forward slash) then this is your chance to find out. And what happens when you need to write a foreign word--perhaps Polish, Urdu or Icelandic--but you don't know what the accents are called, let alone where to find them on your computer? Oxford Style Manual is strong on diacritics-- signs and symbols on, or near, letters. There's helpful advice about foreign names too: "To call Calais callis would be obscurantist, to call Munich Munchen exhibitionist".

The vexed laws, conventions and effects of copyright and the stylistic mysteries of special subjects from music to Jewish scriptures are all meticulously detailed in Oxford Style Manual's first sixteen chapters. The second half is an alphabetical listing: eccentric dictionary cum mini-encyclopaedia crossed with an authoritative account of written dos and don'ts (neither of which needs an apostrophe). Thus you learn that a diglot is a book containing text in two languages, a bequerel is a unit of radioactivity and school-leaving age needs a hyphen whereas sleeping bag does not.

It's a dream book for wordoholics and pedants to browse in and a valuable useful reference work for those who just want to get things right whether they work in the print media or not.--Susan Elkin

It's important to note though that this book isn't a self-help english guide but a reference tool. Writing an essay and you need to know the correct way to quote sources or cite references? Then this book can help. It even has basic guides to other languages - from African Languages to Welsh. These guides have information on, for example, what alphabet they use (with examples if it's a non-roman alphabet) and how to pronounce certain characters.

It also has a particulary helpful section on American English, with a sizeable conversion chart showing what American words mean in 'normal' English (about-face = about-turn, alligator clip = crocoldile clip, antenna [radio, TV] = aerial).

Personally, I don't use the included 'Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors', though I'm neither a writer or an editor so this is hardly surprising. The dictionary contains, among other things, abbreviations and foreign words but not definitions.

This book has earned a place on my desk where it is always within easy reach, and except my dictionary, is probably my most used book.