«The Globe and Mail» Style Book: A Guide to Language and Usage. 9th ed.

Sarah Robertson is the editor of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

This is the ninth edition of a book last revised in 1998. As in that
edition, entries are arranged alphabetically and cross-referenced, and
there are three appendixes (code of conduct, history of The Globe and
Mail, maps of Canada and the rest of the world). The authors discuss a
wide range of usage issues, but, as Globe editor-in-chief Edward
Greenspon notes in the preface, the book “is about much more than
spelling and grammar, straying into historical claims to place names and
the intricacies of journalistic practice.”

Departures from the 1998 edition include the removal of some entries
(abided, above board, etc.) and the addition of many more (al-Qaeda,
dot-com, pissed off, Spider-Man, Correctional Service Canada,
illegitimate, Post-it notes, BCE Inc., Sept. 11, 2001, etc.). Some
entries, including Afghanistan and Yukon, have been expanded. Notably,
The Globe has replaced its official spelling guide (Nelson Canadian
Dictionary) with the Canadian Oxford Dictionary because the former is
not being updated. Entries have been revised to reflect the switch in
dictionaries (e.g., flextime is now flex-time), with exceptions listed
in the entry for spelling. A quibble: in changing the headword W5 to
W-Five, the authors neglected to update the accompanying commentary,
which begins with the sentence, “No hyphen.”

The non-journalist who uses this solid, engagingly written reference is
treated to insights into the newspaper business, such as this
observation in the entry for late: “Several people, such as long-time
cabinet ministers who have been out of the limelight for several years,
have proved to be embarrassingly healthy after being described by a
careless journalist as ‘the late.’”