Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford (now published as New Hart's Rules) is a reference book and style guide published in England by Oxford University Press (OUP). Hart's Rules originated as a compilation of best practices and standards by English printer and biographer Horace Hart over almost three decades during his employment at other printing establishments, but they were first printed as a single broadsheet page for in-house use by the OUP in 1893 while Hart's job was controller of the university press. They were originally intended as a concise style guide for the staff of the OUP, but they developed continuously over the years, were published in 1904, and soon gained wider use as a source for authoritative instructions on typesetting style, grammar, punctuation, and usage.
Hart's Rules has been revised and republished under different titles, including The Oxford Guide to Style (2002), The Oxford Style Manual (2003, also including The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors of 2000), New Hart's Rules (2005, an updated but abridged, pocket-size version), and New Oxford Style Manual (2012, inclusive of New Hart's Rules and The New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors of 2005, together notably shorter than the 2003 combined edition). A revised second edition of New Hart's Rules (without the Dictionary) was released in 2014, and a second New Oxford Style Manual was compiled in 2016, using the 2014 versions of both of the individual volumes.
After their first appearance, Hart's rules were reissued in a second edition in 1894, and two further editions in 1895. They were continually revised, enlarged and reissued, and had reached their 15th edition by the time they were eventually published as a book in March 1904. New editions and reprints continued to appear over almost eight decades, until the 39th edition (1983) which was reprinted fifteen times—the last in 2000. Three of these reprints included corrections: 1986, 1987, and 1989.
In February 2002, Oxford University Press published a new and much longer version (what would have been the 40th edition of Hart's) under the title The Oxford Guide to Style and the editorship of Robert M. Ritter, promoted as "Hart's Rules for the 21st Century".
The Oxford Style Manual (2003, ISBN 978-0198605645) combined in a single volume, of 1056 pages, The Oxford Guide to Style (2002) and The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (2000).
From this version was adapted New Hart's Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors, first published in September 2005. While New Hart's Rules (NHR) rewrites some material from the 2002/2003 version, it also abridged some, to fit into its small format.
The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, also compiled by Ritter, had been available since 2000 as a separate companion volume to Hart's, in line with the eleven editions of the dictionary's famous predecessor, the Authors' and Printers' Dictionary by Frederick Howard Collins (first published in 1905 and renamed in 1983). A freshly compiled successor, published in 2005, returned to the "traditional small handbook form", matching New Hart's Rules, and is titled The New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. It is intended for "people who work with words—authors, copy-editors, proofreaders, students writing essays and dissertations, journalists, people writing reports or other documents, and website editors." [1] This edition was reprinted with a new cover in 2014, to match a make-over of various Oxford reference publications. It is distinct from the similarly titled [New] Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors (originally 1991; 2nd edition, 2009), a companion volume of technical terminology not included in any of the compilation editions.
In 2012, Oxford University Press published a new combined edition, New Oxford Style Manual (2nd Edition, ISBN 978-0199657223). It includes New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors and New Hart's Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors, both from 2005.
A second edition of NHR, under the full title New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide, was published in October 2014, under new editor Anne Waddingham. Another combined edition, again titled New Oxford Style Manual (3rd Edition, ISBN 978-0198767251), was released in March 2016, with the content of the 2014 editions of New Hart's Rules and New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, and matching their cover style. New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors (2009) remains a separate volume.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world.
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like words, and the use of foreign terms, the dictionary became the standard for other style guides to writing in English. Hence, the 1926 first edition remains in print, along with the 1965 second edition, edited by Ernest Gowers, which was reprinted in 1983 and 1987. The 1996 third edition was re-titled as The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, and revised in 2004, was mostly rewritten by Robert W. Burchfield, as a usage dictionary that incorporated corpus linguistics data; and the 2015 fourth edition, revised and re-titled Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, was edited by Jeremy Butterfield, as a usage dictionary. Informally, readers refer to the style guide and dictionary as Fowler's Modern English Usage, Fowler, and Fowler's.
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 17 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing.
Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), an American lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theory of music. Earlier editions were published under the titles A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians; the work has gone through several editions since the 19th century and is widely used. In recent years it has been made available as an electronic resource called Grove Music Online, which is now an important part of Oxford Music Online.
The Associated Press Stylebook, alternatively titled The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, is a style and usage guide for American English grammar created by American journalists working for or connected with the Associated Press journalism cooperative based in New York City. The Stylebook offers a basic reference to American English grammar, punctuation, and principles of reporting, including many definitions and rules for usage as well as styles for capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, and numerals.
In English-language punctuation, the serial comma, also referred to as the series comma, Oxford comma, or Harvard comma, is a comma placed immediately after the penultimate term and before the coordinating conjunction in a series of three or more terms. For instance, a list of three countries might be punctuated without the serial comma as "France, Italy and Spain" or with the serial comma as "France, Italy, and Spain". The serial comma can serve to avoid ambiguity in specific contexts, though its employment may also generate ambiguity under certain circumstances.
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's Most Authoritative Newspaper is a style guide first published in 1950 by editors at the newspaper and revised in 1974, 1999, and 2002 by Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. According to the Times Deputy News Editor Philip B. Corbett in 2007, the newspaper maintains an updated, intranet version of the manual that is used by NYT staff, but this online version is not available to the general public. An e-book version of this fifth edition was issued in February 2015, and it was released in paperback form in September 2015.
Oxford spelling is a spelling standard, named after its use by the University of Oxford, that prescribes the use of British spelling in combination with the suffix -ize in words like realize and organization instead of -ise endings.
Horace Henry Hart was an English printer and biographer. He was the author of Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers, first issued in 1893.
Sentence spacing concerns how spaces are inserted between sentences in typeset text and is a matter of typographical convention. Since the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe, various sentence spacing conventions have been used in languages with a Latin alphabet. These include a normal word space, a single enlarged space, and two full spaces.
MLA Handbook, formerly MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (1977–2009), establishes a system for documenting sources in scholarly writing. It is published by the Modern Language Association, which is based in the United States. According to the organization, their MLA style "has been widely adopted for classroom instruction and used worldwide by scholars, journal publishers, and academic and commercial presses".
Grove Art Online is the online edition of The Dictionary of Art, often referred to as the Grove Dictionary of Art, and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, which also includes the online version of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. It is a large encyclopedia of art, previously a 34-volume printed encyclopedia first published by Grove in 1996 and reprinted with minor corrections in 1998. A new edition was published in 2003 by Oxford University Press.
Bryan Andrew Garner is an American legal scholar and lexicographer. He has written more than two dozen books about English usage and style such as Garner's Modern English Usage for a general audience, and others for legal professionals. Garner also wrote two books with Justice Antonin Scalia: Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges (2008) and Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012). He is the founder and president of LawProse Inc.
Garner's Modern English Usage (GMEU), written by Bryan A. Garner and published by Oxford University Press, is a usage dictionary and style guide for contemporary Modern English. It was first published in 1998 as A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, with a focus on American English, which it retained for the next two editions as Garner's Modern American Usage (GMAU). It was expanded to cover English more broadly in the 2016 fourth edition, under the present title. The work covers issues of usage, pronunciation, and style, from distinctions among commonly confused words and phrases to notes on how to prevent verbosity and obscurity. In addition, it contains essays about the English language. An abridged version of the first edition was also published as The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style in 2000 and a similar version was published in The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition in 2017. The latter includes three sections titled "Grammar", "Syntax" and "Word Usage", each with several subcategories.
The full stop, period, or full point. is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence.
Sentence spacing guidance is provided in many language and style guides. The majority of style guides that use a Latin-derived alphabet as a language base now prescribe or recommend the use of a single space after the concluding punctuation of a sentence.
Tamil Lexicon is a twelve-volume dictionary of the Tamil language. Published by the University of Madras, it is said to be the most comprehensive dictionary of the Tamil language to date. On the basis of several precursors, including Rottler's Tamil–English Dictionary, Winslow's Tamil–English Dictionary, and Pope's Compendious Tamil–English Dictionary, work on a more exhaustive dictionary began in January 1913 and the first forms were printed by the end of 1923. Initially estimated at ₹ 100,000, the total cost of the project came to about ₹ 410,000. The first edition had 4,351 pages in seven volumes, including a one-volume supplement, which were printed between 1924 and 1939 and had 104,405 words, with an additional 13,357 words in the supplementary volume, totaling to 124,405 words in all.