The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's MostAuthoritative Newspaper

This manual traces its roots at least to 1895; The Times's archives show that a version existed then, but the earliest one still accessible dates from 1923. It consisted of 40 pages, set in the same agate type as the classified ads. With its pasteboard cover, it slid easily into a letter envelope. It prescribed the credit for an overseas dispatch: By Wireless to The New York Times. (The paper dropped the hyphen from New-York in December 1896.) The 1923 booklet cautioned printers that in following copy, they must make allowance "for the intelligence (or lack of intelligence)" of the advertiser. It listed pasha, pigmy and seraglio among "Words Frequently Misspelled" (raising a question: What were they doing in The Times at all, not to mention frequently?).
Between 1923 and the latest previous edition of this book, in 1976, rule inflation set in: that volume ran to 231 pages, in book-size 11-point type. Its preamble quoted, in turn, from the 1962 revision: "Style rules should be extensive enough to establish the desired system of style, but not so extensive as to inhibit the writer or the editor. The rules should encourage thinking, not discourage it. A single rule might suffice: 'The rule of common sense will prevail at all times.' "

Common sense, in today's newsroom, should mean that this book -- aside from its guidance about vulgarity and slurs -- does not serve as a catalog of bans on words or phrases. Indeed, few notions can curdle the joy of journalism more quickly than the idea that rules outweigh the freshness a writer may infuse into a phrase usually considered irregular or shopworn. So if the manual seems to lean on qualifiers like "normally" and "ordinarily," it is to remind writers and editors that one measure of skill is exceptions, not rules.


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In approaching the mechanics of usage and grammar, this manual reflects The Times's impression of its educated and sophisticated readership -- traditional but not tradition-bound. In several entries on evolving usage (CONTACT, DATA and SPLIT INFINITIVE, for example) the manual abandons the most conservative standard but alerts writers that a minority of readers may differ. In a few notable cases (BLAME; HOPEFULLY; LIKE; MEDIA; and WHO, WHOM), the manual hews to a traditional course while acknowledging the change that is unfolding elsewhere. Many entries also offer examples of rephrasing to avoid stodginess.

Throughout, the goal is a fluid style, easygoing but not slangy and only occasionally colloquial. Newcomers will find that while The Times favors terseness (as in the entries on BOARD OF DIRECTORS and ONE OF THE), it uses fewer abbreviations than the news agencies or most other papers. The aim is to avoid a telegraphic staccato: even a terse newspaper can usually spare a word or two to say, for example, critics of the tax rather than the compressed tax critics (are those like music critics?).