ISBN is the number that identifies a book in publication. Barnes and Noble has these more prominently displayed. Either way, I would go with APA: The Easy Way. It had good a lot of good reviews and very few bad ones. It is also relatively cheap. I think it was only $10.95. It was also published in April of 2007. So it should be fairly up to date. For MLA, I would go with: MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition. It had a lot of good reviews as well. I have never written in these styles, but if I needed to then these are the books I would get. You can always buy more if they don't cover everything you need. If you aren't sure which one to get, then you may want to consider finding a library to research those styles. If you don't have a library near you, then I would get the books I mentioned above. Really, this is probably the wrong forum to get this information. You might be better off searching on a forum that was specifically setup for writers. This is really a webmaster/web developer/internet marketer forum. The forum you are posting in is actually for copywriting, which is more or less writing sales letters that you see on the internet or in magazines.
here i found a great link where we can get the exact books of mla and apa style.I am going to buy this two books at this website http://www.mla.org/style and another book at http://books.apa.org/subpages/apastyle.cfm which provides training for those styles.
I can vouch for this one: MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition. It was a favorite of many English teachers in college. Elements of Style is also an excellent resource for any writer, beginner or otherwise. I highly recommend reading it several times periodically as a refresher. Participating in forums like this one is another good way to develop your English. Since a lot of writing uses a conversational tone, chatting in forums will help you see how native English speakers actually speak. You should also read English writing: newspapers, magazines, websites, books, etc. As you read, you should dissect each sentence and paragraph as if they were a science experiment. Notice capitalization, punctuation, and subject-verb agreement. Pay attention to each word, then how each word relates to other words in the sentence. Understand the relationship between the words that are written and the meaning that's conveyed. Good luck to you!
Well, by looking at the entire thread, I must admit there is some interesting discussion going on here. Laxmi, firstly I would like to say one thing, probably this will sound repetition of what others have said but holds a valid point: before diving in a sea, you should know how to swim. By this I mean before you learn any particular writing style, you need to know the basics of the language, ie, grammar. Just by saying you do not become perfect. None of your posts reveal that. No hard feelings, just a general suggestion. Secondly, speak for yourself. If you do not know anything thats your drawback and not a nation's. I have many colleagues in India who can actually give any native english writer a run for their money. So, a person's citizenship can never be the deciding factor as to whether the writer is good or not!! The writer's marketing abilities talks for him/her. Thirdly, as for learning different styles of writing: just read read and read more and more books and by books i do not mean books teaching different writing styles but I mean books written in different writing style. That will do the trick for you.
Why don't you just look it up? (It's 'plagiarism' by the way) In case you can't, here's what it means... This was my post: This was part of the other dude/dudette's post: Notice a similarity? It's not that big of a deal in forum posts but if a writer's caught doing this sort of thing in his/her profession as well, their employer's going to screw them... and I don't mean that as in pleasing the boss. So it's a bad idea to copy or rephrase what someone else has said. Cheers
Oh well, godofwriting... I am so sorry.. I did not notice you had made this post earlier. I did not intend to copy or plagiarize anything here!! I am myself a writer and I know what is plagiarism. Did not mean to offend you or your post. It was just my general view and my mistake, before posting it, I should have checked what others have posted. I just checked a few posts in the beginning and gave my view.