Yahoo to release a new style guide for web writing
If it’s one thing serious bloggers need, it’s an objective style book like what print publications have in The Associated Press Stylebook or The Chicago Manual of Style.
Is website one word or two? Is internet capitalized? Is it re-tweet or retweet?
The dilemma provoked me to write a guest post on Blogussion revealing a simple but effective trick bloggers can use to remain consistent with word styles.
Copy style may not seem like a big deal. But there are commercial reasons why newspapers and magazines use objective standards for their word styles. The publication that uses consistent and objective styles reaps the subliminal benefits of a well-conformed and unified body of work which pleases the human cognition. The same rules applies to blog content — especially the blog content that is consumed by a large group of readers.
Yahoo seems to have taken up the cause of finding an objective standard for web content writers. According to Business Insider, “The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, And Creating Content For The Digital World” will hit stores on July 6, 2010 at $21.99 for retail. Amazon will sell it for $13.49 before shipping.
Unfortunately Yahoo is notorious for inconsistent word styles. So much so that a frequently updated blog named “Terribly Write,” created by an ex-Yahoo employee, chronicles all of the style mistakes made on Yahoo websites since March of 08.
But regardless of whether or not Yahoo has a good copy editing track record, it’s nice to see someone publishing a copy style guide for web content writers. Yahoo even indicated that the guide will contain advice for optimizing web pages for search engines.
According to the Amazon description, the guide will cover:
- Identifying the audience and making the site accessible to everyone
- Constructing clear and compelling copy
- Developing a site’s unique voice
- Streamlining text for mobile devices
- Optimizing Web pages to increase the chances of appearing in search results
- Streamlining text so that people can read your pages at Internet speed.
Ironically the Yahoo style guide will only be available in print.
P.S. For the record — Internet is capitalized!
Tags: blog seo, content, styles, writing
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Awesome – a must-read for many.
Remember, always ping your blog. This is to make sure that search engine spider will always crawl your blog after you have updated it. Search engines like sites that are always updated. This will also help you improve your ranking in search engine. A site which always updated is will rank higher than a site that never update. This will also help you tell your subscribed readers that you have publish a new post.
The blog chronicling the errors that are made every day by Yahoo’s editors and writers is Terribly Write. Yahoo’s errors aren’t restricted “inconsistent word styles” — they include factual errors, grammatical errors, misspellings, typos, punctuation problems AND inconsistent spelling. You’ll find both “Internet” and “internet” on Yahoo, as well as “Web site,” “website,” and “web site.” If Yahoo’s style guide is so good, why do its writers and editors find it impossible to follow?
Thanks for the correction Laura!
I suppose that it’s good that Yahoo has created this guide, but I’ve invested so much time and created so much content based on Chicago’s 15th ed. that I really don’t want to start switching it up — especially since some of the punctuation guidelines conflict with with CMOS. It’s not perfect, but following CMOS and a consulting OED is still our best option.