• The Careful Writer. Theodore Bernstein.
  
  
• Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. A standard dictionary with usage notes. This is the dictionary editors at SDSU use most frequently to check spelling and word division.
  
  
• The American Heritage Dictionary. Contains excellent usage notes. Used as a secondary source for spelling and word division.
  
  
• Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. Various publishers. A reference source of words and their synonyms. (See Roget's Interactive Thesaurus.)
  
  
• Words into Type. Prentice-Hall. Third Edition. Similar to Chicago Manual of Style, with more grammatical information. Used as a secondary source of style and copy preparation.
  
  
• Associated Press (AP) Stylebook. The journalist's "bible," the style manual is an essential tool for all writers, editors, students and public relations specialists. It provides guidelines on spelling, capitalization, grammar, punctuation and usage, with special sections on business and sports. Included is a guide on media law, with practical guidelines on libel law, privacy, copyright and access to places of information, and a special section on Internet and computer terms, a comprehensive effort to unify spelling and usage of computer-related terms, from Web site and e-mail to URLs and "cyber-" prefixes. SDSU has adopted this reference as the university's official style manual for publications targeting media and other external and internal audiences.
  
  
• The Elements of Style. William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. A guide to effective writing. Good background reading.
  
  
• Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age. From the Editors of Wired; Constance Hale, editor. A glossary of computer terminology and usage.
  
  
• Many software applications have spellcheck and even grammar-checking systems. These tools are useful for checking and correcting text online. However, proofreading a printed copy is likely to catch many more errors.
  
  
  
  

Links to Online Reference Works:

Acronym Finder

Aphorisms Galore

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, available courtesy of the Bartleby project.

Carrie Stacks, a full-text electronic reference library.

Common Errors in English

The Curmudgeon's Stylebook

Dr. Nad's Prig Page

Encyclopedia Britannica, available courtesy of The Washington Post.

Guidelines for bibliographic citation in MLA and APA style, available courtesy of Purdue University.

Internet Public Library Writing Resources

Jack Lynch's Grammar and Style Notes, grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage.

My Virtual Reference Desk, an index of reference resources on the Internet.

North Carolina State University's Online Writing Lab

Online Books Page, an indexed and linked list of thousands of books available online.

Purdue University Online Writing Lab

Resources for Technical Writers

Roget's Interactive Thesaurus To use the thesaurus, simply type a word in the gold search box and click the 'Look it up' button. A list of synonyms and antonyms will be returned.

Virtual Reference Sites, over 2,500 of the most popular information reference locations and tools on the Web. Includes maps, calculators, sports, travel, health, jobs, weather, music, autos and more.

The Voice of the Shuttle, a comprehensive Web resource for humanities research, available courtesy of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Translators, online:
http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/text.html
http://www.word2word.com/dictionary.html

Webopedia, online dictionary and search engine for computer and Internet technology.

William Strunk's Elements of Style, available courtesy of the Bartleby project.

Writer's Free Reference, a list of free reference sites useful to writers.

WWWebster (TM) Dictionary, based on Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (R) Dictionary, Tenth Edition.

 

Prepared by Editorial Styleguide Subcommittee of the SDSU Communicators Committee. Revised April 2004.