American Medical Association Editors. 2007. American Medical Association Manual of Style: A Guide
for Authors and Editors, 10th ed. Oxford University Press USA. $55, 816 pages.

New Edition!  From Amazon.com: "The 10th edition has expanded its electronic guidelines, with the understanding that authors now routinely submit articles through online systems and often cite Web-only content. Ethical and legal issues receive increased attention, with detailed guidelines. . . . More than a style manual, this 10th edition offers invaluable guidance on how to navigate the dilemmas that authors and researchers and their institutions, medical editors and publishers, and members of the news media who cover scientific research confront in a society that has thrust these issues center stage."

American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological
Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Links to Amazon.com: (Spiral Bound $33.95)
(Paperback $26.95). Free shipping, no taxes.

Fifth Edition!   The APA Publication Manual is the commanding guide in psychology, and found in other fields ranging from education to literature. The new edition shows how to format papers (40 pp., 15 with diagrams), expands coverage of tables and figures (50 pp.), adds Web sources to the 95 references sources covered (75 pp.), and refines the best section on avoiding bias found anywhere (15 pp.). The spiral bound edition lies open to the page you select, not a trivial convenience!

American Sociological Association. 1997. The ASA Style Guide. 2nd ed. Washington, DC:
American Sociological Association. $10, 40 pages.

Sociology, in style! This is more a pamphlet than a book. Nevertheless, it covers the basic features of ASA style. This style is widely followed in sociology, although some features (as documented in the Student's Guide to Sociology) are also widely ignored. The little book spends an inordinate amount of space on wordy phrases to avoid in research writing. This has apparently been effective. Papers published in the American Sociological Review reflect a crisp style that may be the best in research writing. This guide is also available at the ASA website at discount prices.

University of Chicago Press. 2003. Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003. Retail $55.00. Amazon.com $38.50!

Refreshingly revised, in active voice. The new edition surpasses the last in clarity and organization, so much so that you will gratefully relegate the old edition to its now proper role as a door stop. Chicago as solved the problem of citing electronic sources by adding a URL to the format of an equivalent print document. You may even dispense with an access date. CMS no longer reads like instructions for programming a VCR, or like a book cobbled together by a committee. The style is clear, concise, and direct throughout.

Turabian, Kate L. 2007. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th ed.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. $11.56.

Compact CMS?  The Chicago Manual of Style website advises the "CMS is primarily a reference for manuscripts that will be published as books. For a master's thesis [and similar papers], you would find Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers . . . much more useful." At the heart of a research style is documentation—how to format notes and references. Most of the essential features of Chicago style are covered in this manual, though page formatting for class projects is missing. New with this edition is a guide to writing research papers, as well as the guide to documentation and style.

Council of Science Editors. 2006. Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors,
Editors, and Publishers, 7th ed. $59.95, 628 pages.

How useful?  Though the new edition appears to be selling well, it is not clear who is using it. Most journals in the biosciences follow their own proprietary style. Some give lip service to the CSE manual, then send you to older editions to use as a reference! If you really need it, you already know it. If in doubt, check a library copy to determine if this book will meet your needs. It works best as a special reference for nuances in nomenclature, and for the details of various forms of measurement. Several major fields in the sciences have their own style (physics, chemistry, electrical engineering) and publish their own style guide. Where this fits is a bit of a mystery.

Strunk, William, Jr., and E. B. White. (1999). The Elements of Style (4th ed.). New York: Macmillan.
Cover price $6.95, 105 pages.

Classic! This compact classic touches on the high points of good writing. It is well worth reading before taking on a major writing challenge, a good way to refresh your skills. The latest, fourth, edition has been seriously updated and is a great bargain.

This book has become a standard reference, as well as a point of reference for writers and teachers. Written in the early part of the 20th century, knowledge of the Elements of Style is an accepted part of the cultural literacy of the 21st.

Microsoft Corporation. 2003. Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, 3rd ed.
Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Press. Cover price $29.95, 608 pages & CD-ROM.

Top Tech Guide!  You'll find expertly articulated and organized information about general usage, grammar, punctuation, formatting and layout, front matter, and indexing and attributing, as well as focused guidelines for topics such as creating specific document types, including Readme files and case studies; writing for software developers; documenting the user interface; and developing bias-free communications. Many topnotch technical companies, writers, and editors consider the Microsoft Manual to be a standard in the industry, and a reference to complement the The Chicago Manual of Style.

Gibaldi, Joseph. 2003. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed.
New York: Modern Language Association of America. $17.00, 361 pages.

The MLA Handbook documents a style especially appropriate for scholarship in literary fields. Coverage of documentation formats for text citations and references is excellent, occupying about a third of the volume. Other sections introduce the process of research and writing, and the mechanics of punctuation, mostly quite conventional. The new sixth edition has relaxed requirements for using brackets in quotations and expanded coverage of referencing Internet sources.

National Library of Medicine. 2007. List of Journals Indexed for Medline. Bethesda, MD: National
Institutes of Health. 363 pp. Available at: ftp://nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov/online/journals/ljiweb.pdf.
Download Page Terms & Conditions: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/terms_cond.html.

List of Journal Abbreviations. Medical editors require the use of these abbreviations when citing journals in references. There are now two lists: the traditional list for Medline (formerly for Index Medicus) and one for online serials. These are both available on the page linked above, or download directly from the ftp site. To download the PDF document click the right mouse button on the link and select "Save Target As." This is a fairly large file, about 1580KB.

Taylor, Barry N. 1995. Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI). Gaithersburg, MD:
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 811. 80 pp.
Available at: http://physics.nist.gov/Document/sp811.pdf.

Free Style Guide for Numbers. The NIST is the official representative of the United States before the Convention du Metre which in turn is the body that defines the International System of Units (SI) for the world scientific community. A free 80 page style guide is available from their website. This link (click on the title above) is directly to the document which is in Adobe PDF format. To download rather than display the document click the right mouse button on the link and select "Save Target As."