Writers and editors of Spanish have long needed an authoritative guide to written language usage, similar to The MLA Style Manual and The Chicago Manual of Style. And here it is! This reference guide provides comprehensive information on how the Spanish language is copyedited for publication. The book covers these major areas: Language basics: capitalization, word division, spelling, and punctuation. - Language conventions: abbreviations, professional and personal titles, names of organizations, and nationalities. - Bibliographic format, particularly how Spanish differs from English. - Spanish language forms of classical authors' names. - Literary and grammatical terminology. - Linguistic terminology. - Biblical names and allusions. - A dictionary of grammatical doubts, including usage, grammatical constructions of particular words and phrases, verbal irregularities, and gender variations. The authors (currently or formerly affiliated with Arizona State Univ.) intend to provide an English-language guide for writers and editors working in Spanish for publication. Not a grammatical reference, this work addresses issues of style, lexical and grammatical ambiguities, citation formats, and topics like gender, plurals, and capitalization. Regional variations are discussed, and various lists of terms are given, such as professions, abbreviations, and Latin expressions. The bibliography of special-terminology dictionaries is sure to be helpful. Unfortunately, while some superfluous material is included (like several appendixes of common allusions), there are some glaring omissions. The authors state that their purpose is to "cover material that is problematical with reference to Spanish-language citations" and refer readers to the major style manuals for other details. The reader is left to assume that any untreated topic--such as citing direct quotes within the text or the use of footnotes--does not vary from customary English usage. Therefore, a stand-alone style guide for Spanish is still lacking. Recommended for academic libraries. -Anna Youssefi, Univ. of Houston Libs. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. "The importance of this book...is indisputable....Its usefulness will apply to an audience far beyond students of Spanish; it will, in fact, become a companion text, like the MLA Style Manual, to a larger audience of users running the gamut from bilingual writers, i.e., fiction writers and journalists, to editors who are unsure about proper usage." (Dick Gerdes, Professor and Chair of Modern and Classical Languages, George Mason University) David William Foster is Regents’ Professor of Portuguese and Spanish at Arizona State University, where he directs the Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities. Daniel Altamiranda has taught at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Arizona State University. Carmen de Urioste is Professor of Spanish at Arizona State University.