Style Bites

Books
On Writing Well: It was written quite some time ago, so not all of it is relevant to web publishing, but its basic advice has held up well. I have a marked-up copy somewhere around the office if you’d like to reference the juicy bits—and you would do well to reference them.

The Elements of Style: Also known as Strunk & White’s, it has some timeless info that any good writer should take to heart.

Words on Words: John Bremner was a legendary figure in the KU J-school. He died long before I passed through the newsroom there, but his book was required reading in our basic and advanced editing classes. It’s a handy reference to commonly confused words, and is good to have around to help you out of sticky situations.

Dictionary
Merriam-Webster.com is our preferred dictionary. If you ask me how to spell something, my response will be “em hyphen dubya dot com.”

Food Words
The Food Lover’s Companion

Google and Wikipedia
Indispensable in looking up chef and restaurant names. Misspelled names make us look stupid.