I shoulda thrown a smiley in there; my declaration was intended as humor (Conan O’Brien occasionally makes the same remark about USAToday).
Thank you all!
While I’ve got your attention, can anyone tell me what the US equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary is? My client operates in US English (though they are a Middle Eastern Company), and I want to give writers a definitive reference source for US spellings.
I’m not sure there’s a consensus, but in my experience, that would be *Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged *.
What definitions do you have?
Very true, very true. 
I didn’t think you were being serious, but just in case… 
The major problem with Webster’s Third is that it was published about 50 years ago. A lot of new words and new meanings of existing words have come along in that time. I’d go with Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary as a definitive reference. Better yet, it’s on-line at http://www.merriam-webster.com/ .
The Associated Press Stylebook and The New York Times Manual of Style both specify Webster’s New World College Dictionary as first backup reference for items not covered in those books themselves. I’m not sure why, since I’m not aware of any other particular claim to fame for that dictionary. (By contrast, Webster’s Third New International is known for having been the most complete and authoritative dictionary available when it was published, but is now rather outdated. Merriam-Webster’s is known for being extremely permissive in their usage notes - indeed, they never met a usage they didn’t approve of - for historical ordering of meanings and for providing etymologies and dates of first use. The American Heritage is known for much more useful usage suggestion based on surveys of a well-chosen usage panel and for clear definitions. Random House seems to be popular among word mavens, but here also, I’m not sure of the reasons.)
Ah. You had a b.f.
I don’t think that to return the question to me with this little effort is very satisfying. Still, I gave this some thought the other night and the reason I think that grammar and usage are separate fields, and that this is a usage question, not a grammar question, and that your assertion that grammar *is *acceptable to describe the question in the OP (suggesting that usage is a subset of grammar) is false, is the following:
Grammar, to my mind, deals with the rules that govern how words are put together to form grammatically correct sentences. It does not (unlike usage) deal with meaning: a grammatical sentence can be perfectly meaningless and still be grammatically correct. Usage deals with those questions where grammar can’t help us (such as idioms): it is not ungrammatical to speak of barking-hot water, it’s just not accepted usage (that I know of). Instead we speak of piping-hot water.
(Professional writer with, among other things, decades of experience writing corporate stuff and dealing with problems arising.)
If you want to list them under a heading most people will find useful most of the time, use ‘Abbreviations’.
If you want to be pedantic about it and are confident that it’s the right choice for your typical user or reader, use ‘Initialisms’. Be ready to catch plenty of flak from people who think ‘Abbreviations’ would have been a simpler, better choice.
If it does no harm to your indexing structure and might help someone, consider listing them under both headings. Or at least consider a redirection signpost (‘Initialisms > See Abbreviations’).
If your purpose has more to do with reducing common mistakes than being a source of reference, use ‘Common Mistakes’. Be aware that this heading makes sense in an educational book, but makes little sense if any in a reference book. Anyone making a common mistake is unlikely to be aware of the need to look it up under ‘Common mistakes’.
It’s a really good idea, in any corporate environment, to discourage the use of ‘e.g.’ and ‘i.e.’ and encourage people to just say what they mean, such as ‘For example’ or ‘that is to say’. The more cosmopolitan the company, the more important this advice becomes. There are many well-educated people who have learned to use English who have no idea what ‘i.e.’ means, and do not enjoy the extra work of being asked to decode an abbreviation for a Latin expression.
Taking the same point further, in any formal corporate literature I would veto the use of both ‘i.e.’ and ‘that is’ and suggest it’s better to convey the idea clearly in the first place, making the ‘i.e.’ redundant.
Yes, I am indeed great fun to know and wildly popular at parties. How could you tell?
There is no American equivalent to the OED; none is needed. If you want a spelling reference, the OED is both overkill and unsuitable. I’m quite fond of the American Heritage Dictionary, though the New Oxford American Dictionary is well-recommended (and available on Kindle).
Just out of interest, why do you say none is needed? Obviously I understand why the OED is unsuitable as a reference for US standard spellings, but wouldn’t a standard reference source be useful? How do you solve scrabble arguments?!
You misunderstand me. The OED, an nearly exhaustive work on the usage and history of words in the English language, covers American usages as well as British. The OED is unsuitable as a reference for spelling, period, as it is inherently descriptive and ridiculously large. I solve Scrabble arguments with a one-volume dictionary of far lesser scholarship. Virtually any dictionary will do, and the Official Scrabble Dictionary is best, as it contains more words and less verbiage.
What **ianzin **and **633squadron **said: where ever you put them, please do tell people to avoid their use. Few people know what they mean and they’re often confused; it’s much clearer to say “for example,” “that is,” “in other words,” and “and so on” instead of e.g., i.e., etc., and whatever else.