Christian Writer's Manual of Style, A [Paperback]

Bob Hudson (Author), Shelley Townsend (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1988

From highly respected editors Bob Hudson and Shelley Townsend comes this standard-setting reference guide for anyone involved in Christian publishing.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is a standard style manual coupled with material of use primarily to religious writers. The basic manual is a revision of The Zondervan Manual of Style (1980) but includes unique features not usually found in style manuals. After surveying Christian writers to determine their needs, the editors chose to include a full chapter on capitalization, spelling, and hyphenation for religious terms and charts of Greek and Hebrew transliterations. They also offer a guide to building a Scripture index and information on gaining permission to quote copyrighted hymns and biblical versions. The addition of this material to an excellent and well-indexed style manual and the reasonable price make this a good purchase even for libraries with other current manuals. Recommended. C. Robert Nixon, M.L.S., Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

A standard reference guide for anyone involved in Christian Publishing. Editors Bob Hudson and Shelley Townsend surveyed fifty Christian authors and editors to find out what they need to know -- but can't find in secular references. How do you handle the capitalization of the deity pronoun? How do you obtain permission to quote from published hymns, poems, or books? Find out fast with this completely indexed style guide. Besides all the basic rules of style, editing, and proofreading, A Christian Writer's Manual of Style includes: - an entire section on capitalization and spelling - abbreviations for books of the Bible, Apocrypha, and pseudepigrapha; for major Bible version in English - charts of Greek and Hebrew transliterations - how to put together a Scripture index - how the word processor has forever changed writing, publishing, and proofreading -- The stylistic examples come from church history and literature, and there is even a list of "Christian cliches to avoid." Whether you're a professional writer, an editor of religious books, or a professor or student at a Christian college, you'll probably use A Christian Writer's Manual of Style at least once a day.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (December 15, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310350212
• ISBN-13: 978-0310350217
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #445,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable for the Christian writer, December 29, 2007

By 

Gary F. Zeolla "Director of Darkness to Light... (Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christian Writer's Manual of Style, A (Paperback)

This book is invaluable to someone like myself who does a lot of Christian writing. I have referred to it often when writing articles for my Web site and newsletter and when working on my books and even on my Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Third Edition. It provides an overview of proper punctuation, capitalization, special formatting like italics and small caps, and abbreviations.

Most any English grammars would provide such information. But what makes this book special is it focuses on the special needs of Christian writers. So the list of abbreviations, for instance, includes the proper abbreviations for all 66 canonical books, along with for the apocryphal and pseudepigrapha books. It also provides lists of proper capitalization, like if "apocryphal" and "pseudepigrapha" in my previous sentence should be capitalized (they shouldn't).

It also shows that when quoting a Scripture verse and giving the verse reference at the end of the sentence, the period should come after the parentheses, e.g., "And he called His name Jesus" (Matthew 1:25). This book also told me that I did not need to use an ellipse in this Scripture quote. Even though I only quoted a part of the verse, what I quoted was a complete sentence.

You can see that I even referred to this book in writing this review. So I highly recommend it.