Allan M. Siegal - The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage

2015 Three Rivers Press Ebook Original

Copyright 2015 by The New York Times Company

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

This is a revised edition of a work originally published in hardcover by Times Books, New York, in 1999.

Cover based on a design by Mimi Park.

eISBN 978-1-101-90322-3

v3.1

The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage has guided thousands of Times journalists in our quest to produce clear and powerful prose. When we have stumbled, it is often because we strayed from the stylebooks counsel.

But you have no doubt noticed some changes in journalism and publishing since the last major revision, by Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly, appeared in 1999. That edition, for example, gave little advice about the web (or the World Wide Web, as we called it then). It was silent about blogs and linking and social media. Even its routine references to print and pages and the paper seem a bit dated now.

An online version, accessible only to Times employees, has been updated ad hoc since 1999. But with the chance to produce a new e-book version for general readers, my colleagues and I decided it was time for a more systematic look.

Weve added scores of new entries, deleted many outdated ones and revised hundreds more. But we found no need for a fundamental change in course, and overall the Siegal-Connolly guidance remains firmly in place. Despite all the upheaval in the world of communications, we realized that the basic goals of Times writing had not changed.

We are journalists not scholars or poets, entertainers or advocates. In The Times, our goal is clear, precise, literate prose that effectively conveys important information to busy readers. Those readers should not be misled by error, distracted by sloppiness or annoyed by pedantry, polemic, slang, jargon or heedless incivility. In fact, the only time they should notice our writing at all is if, occasionally, they pause to admire it.

The tone we seek in The Times is thoughtful and civil. There should always be room for humor, personality and surprise. But at its heart journalism is a serious undertaking, and we go about it seriously. Our language should reflect that.

It should also reflect widely accepted usage among educated English speakers. We do not seek to be in the vanguard by adopting the newest usage or the latest buzzwords. But we must also guard against a reflexive traditionalism that would make The Times seem fusty or out of touch. Language changes, and we should carefully and judiciously reckon with those changes. Above all, the guidelines in this book should be applied thoughtfully, with room for wise exceptions. An earlier version of the manual put it this way: The rules should encourage thinking, not discourage it. A single rule might suffice: The rule of common sense will prevail at all times.

The most obvious changes in this revised edition involve web and technology terms. Based on current usage, e-mail has become email, the World Wide Web is just the web, and a Web site is now a website. We have deleted a few quaintly outdated terms like diskette and added guidance on linking, social media and other digital topics.

Other changes reflect our broader sense of shifts in usage or on social issues. It no longer seemed necessary to caution writers against such outdated words as authoress or mongoloid; who would think to use them? On the other hand, we updated the entry on . With a growing global audience, we now advise more frequent inclusion of Celsius temperatures, and allow currency symbols in some cases for euros, yen and pounds.

Based on errors we have seen repeatedly in our years of editing, we added new warnings about sources of frequent missteps: . In a trickier exercise, we have dropped objections to a few words that were once viewed as overly colloquial but struck us as fully acceptable now: ad for advertisement; host and debut as verbs.

We also changed some rules that created confusion or inconsistency, especially on deadline. For example, we now spell out numbers under 10 in almost all cases, even if they appear in a series with numbers over 10. And we always capitalize what comes after a colon if it is a complete sentence.

Beyond usage rules, The Timess stylebook offers guidance on broader issues of journalistic standards for example, in the entries on . Those fundamental standards have not changed, but we have updated the entries to offer writers and editors more help in applying our standards to a shifting landscape.

We are grateful to Allan Siegal and Bill Connolly, who even in retirement have generously, and gently, offered advice on our revisions. Our colleague Walt Baranger has provided invaluable technical support and suggestions. Of course, the revolution in communication of recent years has not stopped or even slowed. The file of possible revisions for next time will start filling up immediately. Please send suggestions to .

Philip B. Corbett
New York, 2015

a, an, the. Use the article a before a word beginning with a consonant sound, including the aspirate h: a car; a hotel; a historical. Also use it before words like union, euphonious and unit. Use an before a word beginning with a vowel sound: onion; uncle; honor. The choice of article before an abbreviation, a numeral or a symbol depends upon the likely pronunciation: an N.Y.U. student; a C.I.A. officer; an 11-year-old girl.

Avoid the journalese practice of dropping A or The at the beginning of a sentence. If several consecutive sentences or paragraphs begin with the same article, recast some to break the monotony.

An article should appear before each parallel noun in a series or a pair: The ambulance carried a nurse, a paramedic and a doctor; The hero and the heroine received medals. Make an exception if the nouns convey a single idea: a bow and arrow; a hook and eye.

In the title of a literary, artistic or musical work in English or a foreign language omit the opening word a, an or the when it follows another article: An Old Curiosity Shop character. If the opening article in a title is necessary information, rephrase the surrounding sentence to avoid direct juxtaposition with a second article.

If a foreign-language expression begins with an article and appears in an English-language passage, translate the article: at the Arc de Triomphe. But if the article forms part of a title, uppercase it, untranslated: Le Monde; La Scala.

Also see .

A.A. for Alcoholics Anonymous.

AAA (without periods). The former American Automobile Association has adopted the initials as its full official name.

A.&P. for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, the supermarket chain. In a headline, insert a thin space after the ampersand, to balance the appearance of the preceding period.