A Writer's Bookshelf

	A Writer's Bookshelf
	Dictionaries Thesaurus Handbooks Style Manuals Other Guides

There are a number of tools that can be of great help as you compose, edit, and revise your prose. Although some are available in electronic formats, most writers find the traditional print formats more useful. These tools should never be more than an arm's length away from your desk--certainly not several web links away--so that you can use them without hesitation whenever a question about form or meaning occurs to you. If such books are not part of your personal reference library, you will not use them nearly as often as you should.

Dictionaries

A dictionary is not the same as a spell-checker. When you read, a dictionary is the place to discover the meanings of unknown words; when you write, it is a tool for distinguishing among the nuances of words you already know. A dictionary can tell you many things about a word: its spelling, its pronunciation, its different meanings, even its history. Some of the best dictionaries illustrate such information with examples of proper usage, including special idioms that determine how a particular word will combine with prepositions and other parts of speech. One especially useful tool, the Oxford English Dictionary (commonly abbreviated OED) attempts to illustrate the entire history of every word in the English language with quotations that exemplify each word's changing usage. By reading dictionary entries carefully, you can learn an enormous amount about the rich textures of sound, meaning, and nuance that English has bequeathed us.

Invest in a good college dictionary (Webster's New World, the American Heritage, the Random House, or the Merriam-Webster Collegiate are all excellent) and do not let it gather dust. You should never write a paper without referring to it at least a few times. The available online dictionaries can be far more cumbersome to use than hardbound dictionaries. Some dictionaries are coming on the market in CD-ROM formats, but for the moment you would be well advised to stick to a traditional print dictionary.

Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a collection of synonyms, words with similar--but not identical --meanings. Many of us were trained in secondary school to use it simply as a tool for finding substitute words to replace ones we were using too frequently in our prose. Although this is one possible use for a thesaurus, it is not the best or most important one; moreover, it has the danger of encouraging us to view synonyms as indistinguishable in meaning. Treat the thesaurus not as a warehouse with shelves of identical spare parts, but as a chest full of unique jewels, each best suited to a slightly different setting. As such, the thesaurus can be even more useful than a dictionary in helping you explore the nuances of an idea, the slight variations in meaning that you must understand if you are to write with precision and grace. The most important use of a thesaurus is to help us find not duplicate words, but exact ones. Use it whenever you think there is a better word out there than the one you are currently using.

Handbooks and Guides to Usage

Handbooks of English are grammars designed especially for writers who wish to be reminded about the correct form of a particular usage. Some are organized as comprehensive textbooks stepping you through each part of the language; others adopt dictionary formats to enable you to look up the answers to questions that concern you. Each has its own distinctive character; it is worth owning two or more so you can read more than one author's explanation of how to solve a problem. The following handbooks are among the best:

Wilson Follett. Modern American Usage: A Guide, edited and completed by Jacques Barzun. New York: Hill & Wang, 1966. A dictionary guide that is the American equivalent of Fowler (see next entry).
H. W. Fowler. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd rev. ed. 1987, revised and edited by Sir Ernest Gowers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. The standard dictionary guide to usage problems in British English.
Diana Hacker, A Writer's Reference, 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1995.
John Hodges and Mary E. Whitten. Harbrace College Handbook, 12th ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1993.
James A. W. Heffernan and John E. Lincoln. Writing: A College Handbook, 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.

Electronic Resources

Writing Prose: The handbook Writing Prose is distributed to all students entering Yale College. It offers a wealth of advice about matters ranging from grammar to the philosophy of composition. Yale students may obtain copies of Writing Prose at the Yale College Dean's office, the Registrar's office, or the Yale College Writing Center or may download it from this server. (Writing Prose Plus is a hypertextualized version of Writing Prose).
Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgement: Available in the Dean's Office; watch this space for a future online version.
Some Matters of Form: Available in the English DUS's office or downloadable from this site.

Style Manuals

A style manual (sometimes called a style "sheet") is a standard set of forms for preparing a manuscript for final submission or publication. It gives you rules for such things as tables of contents, chapter headings, quotations, punctuations, footnotes, bibliographic citations, and so on, none of which are completely standardized in English. Different disciplines have different rules for how references should be cited in a manuscript. To know how to prepare your Yale papers to suit the requirements of the field in which you are writing, you should consult the relevant style manual. Two style manuals are widely used in the humanities and some social sciences:

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 3rd ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 1988.
The Chicago Manual of Style, 13th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. This is probably the most comprehensive style manual on the market, giving you examples of virtually every sort of citation or manuscript form you are likely to encounter. An abridged version in paperback gives you most of the essentials you will need for a Yale paper: Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1987.

Academic style sheets, especially those in the sciences, often tend to follow the format of the chief journal or professional association publishing in a given discipline. See, for instance, Lee J. Cuba, A Short Guide to Writing about Social Science, 2nd ed. Clearview, IL: Scott Foresman, 1992, which describes the standard forms of writing in the social sciences (summaries, reviews, research papers) and covers matters of documentation in detail. Similar guides may be found for most academic disciplines--ask your instructor.

Other Guides

In addition to the standard reference works discussed above, there is a host of books designed to help you improve one or another aspect of your writing. No brief list could hope to survey the wealth of tools available under this heading, but here are a few that have proven helpful to Yale students:

Kenneth Atchity. The Writer's Time: A Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Offers unusually insightful advice about the practical and emotional problems of researching and writing a long piece of prose. It might be especially helpful when you tackle your senior essay.
Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher, 5th ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992. A classic guide to the entire process of researching, organizing, and writing an original piece of scholarship. Most of the examples are drawn from the work of various historians.
Robert A. Day. How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 4th ed. Philadelphia: ISI Press, 1994. A reliable and thorough guide to writing in the sciences.
Mary Lynch Kennedy and Hadley M. Smith. Academic Writing: Working With Sources across the Curriculum. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986. Good advice on quoting and paraphrasing sources, on documentation, and more generally on writing research and review papers.
Richard A. Lanham. Revising Prose, 3rd ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991. An excellent discussion of the problems you should consider as you set about revising your rough draft. Lanham has written other helpful books about different aspects of writing, including his provocative z, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. All are worth reading.
Richard Marius. A Writer's Companion, 3rd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. A brief guide to the making of arguments and the honing of style, written by a historian and novelist.
Norman E. Steenrod, Paul R. Halmos, Menahem M. Shiffer, and Jean A. Dieudonné. How to Write Mathematics. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1983. A comprehensive guide to the special problems one faces in writing mathematics.
William Strunk and E. B. White. The Elements of Style, 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1979. If you own no other book about writing, own this one. Despite its age and its occasionally archaic advice, it has stood the test of time remarkably well. No other guide is more readable or more helpful, and it deserves to be reread frequently. Click here to view an electronic version of the 1918 Elements of Style, but you would do well to keep a copy of White's revision on your desk. It's slim and inexpensive.
Edward R. Tufte. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 1983. A delightful and opinionated guide to incorporating graphical information effectively with prose.
William Zinsser. On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 5th ed. New York: Harper & Row. 1994. Sensible and readable suggestions about essential matters of style, including clarity, simplicity, unity, and proper usage.

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