Series: Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing

In Economical Writing, Third Edition, acclaimed economist Deirdre N. McCloskey presents a transformative guide to writing that is as engaging as it is instructive. This third edition builds upon her previous editions, offering refreshed insights and strategies tailored to modern writers. Whether you're an economist, a student, or a professional in any field requiring written communication, McCloskey's principles will elevate...

The leading guide to clear writing—and clear thinking—in the legal profession for more than two decades, now newly updated. Admirably clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. Since 2001, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing...

A thoroughly updated edition of a beloved classic that has guided generations of researchers in conducting effective and meaningful research. With more than a million copies sold since its first publication, The Craft of Research has helped generations of researchers at every level—from high-school students and first-year undergraduates to advanced graduate students to researchers in business and government. Conceived by...

Seasoned designer Debbie Berne presents an accessible introduction to book design for authors, editors, and other book people. Design is central to the appeal, messaging, and usefulness of books, but to most readers, it’s mysterious or even invisible. Through interiors as well as covers, designers provide structure and information that shape the meaning and experience of books. In The Design...

“Wow. No one ever told me this!” Wendy Laura Belcher has heard this countless times throughout her years of teaching and advising academics on how to write journal articles. Scholars know they must publish, but few have been told how to do so. So Belcher made it her mission to demystify the writing process. The result was Writing Your Journal...

This book of practical writing and publishing advice celebrates the creative, community-building pleasures of humanist expertise. Humanities experts today are embattled. In a world of crises undermining higher education at every turn, what can still motivate humanists to write? Galvanizing, imaginative, and unrepentantly nerdy, Sarah Mesle’s Reasons and Feeling offers practical writing and publishing advice alongside a forcefully affirmative account...

Do your sentences sag? Could your paragraphs use a pick-me-up? If so, The Writer’s Diet is for you! It’s a short, sharp introduction to great writing that will help you energise your prose and boost your verbal fitness. Helen Sword dispenses with excessive explanations and overwrought analysis. Instead, she offers an easy-to-follow set of writing principles: use active verbs whenever...

This engaging guide offers practical advice to teachers on how to utilise their existing classroom skills to become more effective public writers. After years spent cultivating their expertise and passion for a subject, scholars are uniquely positioned to write great books. Yet, accustomed to writing for an audience of their peers, many scholars find it challenging to adapt their writing...

Blending deep experience, evidence-based advice, and good humour, this is an invaluable resource for everyone involved in developing good scientific writers. Every scientist eventually teaches scientific writing or mentors junior scientists as they develop their writing skills—only to discover that the task is both challenging and remarkably time-consuming. If you are in this position, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the...

From an award-winning instructor of medical editing, this is the first guide designed to introduce the field to prospective and early-career medical editors. Medical editing is a thriving and wide-ranging specialty within the editorial profession. Its practitioners occupy a unique ecosystem that involves its own style manuals and the ability to work with highly technical medical terminology and issues, and...

When Kate L. Turabian first put her famous guidelines to paper, she could hardly have imagined the world in which today’s students would be conducting research. Yet while the ways in which we research and compose papers may have changed, the fundamentals remain the same: writers need to have a strong research question, construct an evidence-based argument, cite their sources,...

An updated edition of the essential guide for all scientists—from undergraduates to senior scholars—who want to produce prose that anyone can understand. Scientific writing is often dry, wordy, and difficult to understand. But, as biologist and experienced teacher of scientific writing Anne E. Greene shows in Writing Science in Plain English, writers from all scientific disciplines can learn to produce...

In this thoroughly updated fourth edition, a trusted editor offers a comprehensive guide to selecting—and working with—a book publisher. For more than two decades, writers have turned to William Germano's Getting It Published as a guide to the world of serious book publishing, including university presses. A professor, author, and thirty-year veteran of the book industry, Germano knows what editors...

The definitive guide to starting and running a freelance editing business. You've been thinking about shifting into the world of freelance editing, but you don't know where to start. In a time when editors are seeking greater flexibility in their work arrangements and schedules, freelancing is an increasingly common career option. But deciding to go it alone means balancing the...

When Kate L. Turabian first put her famous guidelines to paper, she could hardly have imagined the world in which today’s students would be conducting research. Yet while the ways in which we research and compose papers may have changed, the fundamentals remain the same: writers need to have a strong research question, construct an evidence-based argument, cite their sources,...

Jack Hart, master writing coach and former managing editor of the Oregonian, has guided several Pulitzer Prize–winning narratives to publication. Since its publication in 2011, his book Storycraft has become the definitive guide to crafting narrative nonfiction. This is the book to read to learn the art of storytelling as embodied in the work of writers such as David Grann,...

A deeply sourced, inclusive guide to all aspects of science writing with contributions from some of the most skilled and award-winning authors working today. Science writing has never been so critical to our world, and the demands on writers have never been greater. On any given day, a writer might need to explain the details of AI, analyse developments in...

A book-world veteran offers the first copyediting guide focused exclusively on fiction. Although The Chicago Manual of Style is widely used by writers and editors of all stripes, it is primarily concerned with nonfiction, a fact long lamented by the fiction community. In this long-awaited book from the publisher of the Manual, Amy J. Schneider, a veteran copyeditor who’s worked...

A thoroughly updated edition of a beloved classic that has guided generations of researchers in conducting effective and meaningful research. With more than a million copies sold since its first publication, The Craft of Research has helped generations of researchers at every level—from high-school students and first-year undergraduates to advanced graduate students, and researchers in business and government. Conceived by...

Writing an academic book is a daunting task. Where to start? This workbook. So, you’ve written a dissertation. Congratulations! But how do you turn it into a book? Even if you know what to do when revising your dissertation, do you know how to do those things? This workbook by Katelyn Knox and Allison Van Deventer, creators of the successful...

The only guide dedicated solely to developmental editing, now revised and updated with new exercises and a chapter on fiction. Developmental editing—transforming a manuscript into a book that edifies, inspires, and sells—is a special skill, and Scott Norton is one of the best at it. With more than three decades of experience in the field, Norton offers his expert advice...

When a dissertation crosses my desk, I usually want to grab it by its metaphorical lapels and give it a good shake. “You know something!” I would say if it could hear me. “Now tell it to us in language we can understand!” Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get...

For more than thirty years, Writing for Social Scientists has been a lifeboat for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. It starts with a powerful reassurance: Academic writing is stressful, and even accomplished scholars like sociologist Howard S. Becker struggle with it. And it provides a clear solution: In order to learn how to write, take...

A trusted editor turns his attention to the most important part of writing: revision. So you’ve just finished writing something? Congratulations! Now revise it. Because revision is about getting from good to better, and it’s only finished when you decide to stop. But where to begin? In On Revision, William Germano shows authors how to take on the most critical...

I Remember, one of French writer Georges Perec’s most famous pieces, consists of 480 numbered paragraphs—each just a few short lines recalling a memory from his childhood. The work has neither a beginning nor an end. Nor does it contain any analysis. But it nonetheless reveals profound truths about French society during the 1940s and 50s. Taking Perec’s book as...

Legendary writing coach Jack Hart spent twenty-six years at the Oregonian and has taught students and professionals of all stripes, including bloggers, podcasters, and more than one Pulitzer Prize winner. Good writing, he says, has the same basic attributes regardless of genre or medium. Wordcraft shares Hart’s techniques for achieving those attributes in one of the most broadly useful writing...

A book-world veteran offers the first copyediting guide focused exclusively on fiction. Although The Chicago Manual of Style is widely used by writers and editors of all stripes, it is primarily concerned with nonfiction, a fact long lamented by the fiction community. In this long-awaited book from the publisher of the Manual, Amy J. Schneider, a veteran copyeditor who’s worked...

Editing is an invisible art where the very best work goes undetected. Editors strive to create books that are enlightening, seamless, and pleasurable to read, all while giving credit to the author. This makes it all the more difficult to truly understand the range of roles they inhabit while shepherding a project from concept to publication. In What Editors Do,...

An invitation to engage with some of today's most respected science journalists as they take readers beneath the surface to tell the stories behind eleven of the best science stories. With eleven deeply reported, artfully crafted stories and annotations by some of the most thoughtful and respected science journalists working today, The Best Science Stories and How They Work is...

Longtime manuscript editor and Chicago Manual of Style guru Carol Fisher Saller has negotiated many a standoff between a writer and editor refusing to compromise on the “rights” and “wrongs” of prose styling. Saller realized that when these sides squared off, it was often the reader who lost. In her search for practical strategies for keeping the peace, The Subversive...

A thoroughly revised edition of the comprehensive guide to building and maintaining a successful career in writing. Writers talk about their work in many ways: as an art, as a calling, as a lifestyle. Too often missing from these conversations is the fact that writing is also a business, and those who want to make a living from their writing...

Ethnography centres on the culture of everyday life. So it is ironic that most scholars who do research on the intimate experiences of ordinary people write their books in a style that those people cannot understand. In recent years, the ethnographic method has spread from its original home in cultural anthropology to fields such as sociology, marketing, media studies, law,...

When Kate L. Turabian first put her famous guidelines to paper, she could hardly have imagined the world in which today’s students would be conducting research. Yet while the ways in which we research and compose papers may have changed, the fundamentals remain the same: writers need to have a strong research question, construct an evidence-based argument, cite their sources,...

Since 1994, Nancy Mulvany's Indexing Books has been the gold standard for thousands of professional indexers, editors, and authors. This long-awaited second edition, expanded and completely updated, will be equally revered. Like its predecessor, this edition of Indexing Books offers comprehensive, reliable treatment of indexing principles and practices relevant to authors and indexers alike. In addition to practical advice, the...

Writers talk about their work in many ways: as an art, as a calling, as a lifestyle. Too often missing from these conversations is the fact that writing is also a business. The reality is, those who want to make a full- or part-time job out of writing are going to have a more positive and productive career if they...