Weekly writing coach: A shelf of style guides for today

I admit it: I love writing style guides.  I use and recommend a lot of them to writers I coach, and keep a small shelf of my own handy for quick reference.  So I've pulled together a shelf of writing style guides, more than 50 in all, that reflect a wide variety of general and specialty styles that you may find useful in your work.  In addition to basic writing style, the specialties include:

• Several guides to writing within 140 characters for Twitter and similar social-media status updates, including a useful guide to quotations shorter than 140 characters;
• Guides to global and international English styles;
• Digital style guides from Yahoo! and other web stylists. Note that the latest AP style guide (out today) includes social media guidelines and new spellings; you can read a roundup of the changes here;
• Guides for a variety of academic citation styles, including the Chicago, APA, ACS and other manuals;
• News style guides from publications like the New York Times and the Economist, as well as the Associated Press's excellent series of guides--don't miss the AP guide to punctuation; and
• Guides for specialized writing in the public relations, social work, legal, national security, criminal justice, Christian and science and technical worlds, and writing about music and art.

Plus, there are plenty on the mechanics of good writing: Grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, style, clarity and even grace.   Got another style guide you prefer? Leave it in the comments, and I'll add it to the shelf for all to share.

Check out don't get caught on Facebook, where I'm floating ideas and discussing them before they appear on the blog.  It's shaping up as a great networking community for communicators.


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