Sunday, July 20, 2014

The CIA Style Manual & Writers Guide

From Jillian Steinhauer’s 7-9-14 article “The CIA and the Power of Words”:

“Like any proper organization that produces large quantities of writing, the CIA, it turns out, has a style manual. The legal nonprofit National Security Counselors obtained a copy of the 2011 version a little over a year ago, via a Freedom of Information Act request, and posted it online. (Quartz blogged about it yesterday.) It is an absurdly thorough, mundane yet fascinating look at the politics of language.

“The 2011 Style Manual & Writers Guide for Intelligence Publications runs nearly 200 pages. It covers everything you’d expect from a guide of its kind: capitalization, numbers, compound words, modifiers. In some ways, it’s a completely unexceptional document.
“Yet, as you page through, little things start to emerge […].”
To read the entirety of Steinhauer's “The CIA and the Power of Words,” click HERE.


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