Pens and Types or Hints and Helps for those who write, print, read, teach, or learn. A new and improved edition by Benjamin Drew. Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1889. —Breezy and humorous, with a very good discussion of how house styles were implemented in the nineteenth century, and vivid descriptions of the editorial process.
Government Printing Office Manual of Style. —Under various titles, this manual has been updated and grown from a few pages in 1894 to 461 pages in 2016. It is invariably useful, and a survey of the different versions gives us a quick tour of changing American styles in printing.
1894.
1900.
1908.
1913.
1922.
1928.
1935.
1967.
1984.
2008.
2016
(in PDF).
Foreign Languages for the Use of Printers and Translators. Supplement to Style Manual of the United States Government Printing Office. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Washington, 1935.
The Magazine Style-Code; a manual for the guidance of authors, reporters ... and all who write. Largely codified from the system of Theodore Low De Vinne, from the Century magazine, the Century Company's books, and the treatises of F. Horace Teall. 1906.
Text, Type and Style: A Compendium of Atlantic Usage. By George B. Ives. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921.
Hill’s
Manual of Social and Business Forms: A
guide to correct writing with approved methods in
speaking and action in the various relations of life.
By Thos. E. Hill. Chicago: Hill Standard Book Co,
1887. —There is a proper way to say or do anything,
and Mr. Hill will teach it to you, from wedding
invitations to apprenticeship forms to epitaphs to
“how to call, organize and conduct public assemblages”
to how to be the Secretary of the United States
Treasury. This is an immense and immensely useful
book, with many illustrations. It seems to have sold
very well, since many copies are on line; it was
probably marketed through canvassing agents, and we
suppose the sample copy was good enough for the
dullest traveling man to make a sale.
Another
copy.
Another
copy.
Another
copy.