Book excerpt: Much like the Chicago Manual of Style, The Manual of Scientific Style addresses all stylistic matters in the relevant disciplines of physical and biological science, medicine, health, and technology. It presents consistent guidelines for text, data, and graphics, providing a comprehensive and authoritative style manual that can be used by the professional scientist, science editor, general editor, science writer, and researcher. - Scientific disciplines treated independently, with notes where variances occur in the same linguistic areas - Organization and directives designed to assist readers in finding the precise usage rule or convention - A focus on American usage in rules and formulations with noted differences between American and British usage - Differences in the various levels of scientific discourse addressed in a variety of settings in which science writing appears - Instruction and guidance on the means of improving clarity, precision, and effectiveness of science writing, from its most technical to its most popular