The Difference

So for my editing class I had to write a review about a style manual. Since I owned the Chicago Manual of Style I figured I'd just write on that, right? Wrong. My teacher said that everyone in the class had to write on a different style guide--and someone beat me to signing up for Chicago. Therefore I was forced to look at a list of existing style guides--half of which I'd never heard of in my life and/or didn't remotely care about. I ultimately settled on the Oxford Guide to Style, mostly because I like British stuff, and I like Oxford. Luckily the BYU library had a copy, so on Saturday I went to find said manual and write a review on it.

At first I hated the style guide. I wasn't familiar with it; upon flipping through the pages I wasn't enamored by its content. The layout was nice but horrible at the same time (namely the table of content wasn't detailed enough), so only after I was forced to visit the Index did I really figure out the value of this thing. First of all, it's a British style guide. Words like valour and colour are found on the pages. And I found a mini British-American English translation guide (e.g. apartment = flat, pants = trousers). But overall it just has some very handy information I have never seen anywhere else. I was absolutely excited about this style guide and wanted one. Upon researching Amazon.com, I learned the Oxford Guide to Style itself was out of print but that its very same contents were included in the Oxford Style Guide. So I purchased it immediately.

And it came today. I opened the package, showed the manual to my boss, and said, "This is one of the coolest style guides ever."

He looked at the style guide, looked back at me, and replied, "See...that is the difference between you and me."

Apparently liking style guides is the difference between me and a whole lot of other people, too.