Nothing official, but the Chicago Manual of Style is almost so. It's
now in its 15th edition, and almost 1000 pages long. Problem is, it
keeps changing the rules. So, the plural and possessive of my last
name is now Weiss's instead of Weiss'. The copyeditors for my Cuban
anthology adhered to it unquestioningly, which means that I had to
stet thousands (I'm not exaggerating) of things. I and about half my
translators use "toward" or "towards" at will the other half
consistently "toward." This is obviously a musical decision. The
manual prefers "toward," and thinks "towards" is a British
dialectical usage. Not so, but the editors corrected every instance.
Bloody bother.
Mark
At 09:06 AM 1/19/2009, you wrote:
>Yes, hyphens are definitely out - other than stitching together double
>barrelled adjectives of unusual pairing.
>
>In Australia we have a national publication called the Style Manual which
>gives us the latest official decrees on such matters. Do other countries
>have such a thing?
>
>'Less is more' now applies to punctuation - perhaps 'less punctuation, more
>ambiquity' ...
>
>Andrew
>
>
>2009/1/19 bj omanson <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > My wife has taught writing-intensive courses to college students for over
> > thirty years. Progressively, over that time, she has seen less and less
> > punctuation and fewer hyphens, and now spends much of her time and effort
> > fighting to resurrect their use.
> >
> > Conversely, in my recent (and first) experience with a university press
> > copy-editor, the revisions to my manuscript consisted primarily of having
> > much of my punctuation and virtually all of my hyphens stripped away.
> >
> > One feels as beseiged from above as from below.
> >
> > bj
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Christopher C Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 7:20 AM
> > Subject: Re: Inverted commas and such
> >
> >
> > Actually, there may be a reverse lesson in this for myself, in that I am
> > far too anxious about the quality of my writings. Sure, my current book
> > is not ready for a publisher to see but it really doesn't need that much
> > revision as to seem an overwhelming task. And I see a way forward for
> > the verse collection as well.
> >
> > Not sure if this makes sense within the context but... ask me if need
> > be.
> >
> > best, Chris Jones.
> >
> > PS. Using Unicode (UTF8) may also play with punctuation in unintended
> > ways. I don't have the Microsoft character encoding.
> >
>
>
>
>--
>Andrew
>http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
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