The purpose of this paper is to establish some new oscillation criteria for the second-order nonlinear neutral differential equations with damping terms which have the form [ a(t ) | z′(t ) |α- 1 z′(t ) ]′+ b(t ) | z′(t ) |α- 1 z′(t )+ q(t ) | x(σ (t )) |β- 1 x(σ (t ))= 0, where z(t )= x(t )+ p(t ) x(τ (t )). Our theorems improve, extent and unify a number of related results reported in the literature. The wide application of the obtained criteria is illustrated via examples. ...