Sebastian Kirsch: Blog

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For the German language, there exists a classic book for journalists that teaches a clear and understandable style: Deutsch für Profis by Wolf Schneider, the former head of the Hamburg journalists’ school. It is required reading for a number of magazines, for example c’t magazine.

I was looking for a similar book for English style and found the following works:

• On Writing Well by William Zinsser
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk
• The Chicago Manual of Style, the classic that is referred to in almost any publication concerning style and typographical conventions, but which nevertheless I’ve never actually seen.
• The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage
• The Style Guide of the New Economist

The last three are probably of more interest to newspaper journalists, but I will check out the first two to see whether they are comparable to the German style guide mentioned before.