Guardian Books

Wise and thoughtful.

Joan Bakewell 01/04/2008

The best steer to the freshest style.

Alex James 01/04/2008

• Highly readable

From aggro to zeitgeist, the Guardian has produced a highly readable handbook. Those at their wits' end (not wit's end) can be dependent on (or a dependant of) this definitive guide to good style.

Ruth Wyner, author of From the Inside (Aurum 2003) 30/10/2007

• Raise the question!

If you're bugged by people who "beg" the question instead of raising it, or write "Ukranian" and "Ghandi" when they mean Ukrainian and Gandhi, then this is the book for you. It's full of wise and up-to-date advice from the Guardian style gurus.

JC Wells, Professor of Phonetics, University College London 30/10/2007

• Insists on the writing of good English.

I think it valuably insists on the writing of good English. It lays to rest the ungrammatical construction "bored of" which is I know used in rival papers. I hope that under L "lambast" is spelt without an E: I saw "lambaste" in a headline in one of your rival papers. I hope the word "lifestyle" is banned for life. I just told a student never to use the word specifics. I think it?s a very good idea. It might sell like that other punctuation book.

Tom Paulin 30/10/2007

• Fun and useful

It looks like good fun and useful as well.

Graeme le Saux 30/10/2007

• Interest and charm

I've always been fascinated by newspaper style books, ever since I read (and obeyed) my first one at the Glasgow Herald in the 1960s - a decade which is often associated with freedom and anarchy, though not on the Glasgow Herald, where knowing the difference between "expect" and "anticipate" and that "decimate" meant killing one in 10 were matters of primary importance. You can tell a lot about vanished ways of living and thinking from an old style book. For example, the sentence the Herald used to illustrate the wrong use of "literally" was "The steel works are literally running out of coal."

Out goes muscular industry and in comes feminism. Now in the Guardian style book I read "career girl, career woman: these labels are banned" and that actresses need to be called actors. I see why, of course, but I love the imperious instruction. Banned! It makes you wonder how they punish the wrongdoer - write out "actresses are actors" 50 times?

There's lots of good sense on every page of this book. It's Eats, Shoots and Leaves with a lot of extra guidance thrown in, and nearly the equal to it in interest and charm.

Ian Jack 30/10/2007

• Rules liberate

This stuff matters. Rules do not limit; they liberate.

John Humphrys 30/10/2007

• Funnier than the dictionary!

I love the idea of all those Guardian journalists poring through this book to be the Guardian version of politically correct ("an empty rightwing smear designed only to elevate its user"). Even to the extent of calling Ann Widdecombe Miss. Well, Ms Hancock will have this book on the shelf alongside the Thesaurus and Oxford Concise. It's much funnier than both.

Sheila Hancock 30/10/2007

• Wise and thoughtful

Wise and thoughtful in its judgments, this stylebook is just what all journalists need. I rejoice particularly that the "devil" doesn't merit a capital letter, and that "elderly" is not to be used by anyone until they're 70. (And some of us, not even then!)

Joan Bakewell 30/10/2007