From the Blurb: A concise and authoritative guide to contemporary standards of editing and book publishing, this manual is an indispensable desk reference for writers - for students of writing - for editors - for typists, word-processor operators, and compositors-for anyone, in short, who prepares material for publication and who wants to do it with style. Coverage ranges from general standards applicable to any material written for publication-rules of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, abbreviation, punctuation, and the like-to the highly technical conventions used in mathematics, electronics, computer science, chemistry, and the life sciences. In addition, the author offers a wealth of timely information on contemporary English usage, the metric system, bias in writing (and how to avoid it), and other topics of current interest to professional writers, and editors. Step-by-step procedures are provided for copy editing, proofreading, and indexing-practical suggestions that can just as easily be applied to magazine, newsletter, and newspaper work as to book production. In this era of fast-changing technology, The McGraw-Hill Style Manual takes word processing, optical character recognition, and other computer processes into account, while advocating traditional standards of quality for the printed word. From splitting the infinitive without guilt, to shipping artwork to approximating Greek letters on a typewriter that lacks the necessary Greek or mathematical characters-you will find the solution to all kinds of style, usage, and production problems at your fingertips in this unique, timely, and comprehensive guide. And because this book is based on McGraw-Hill's long history of editorial expertise, it is fully authoritative from cover to cover.