Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Yahoo Releases Style Guide for Web Content

Posted by Katie Noonan

Yahoo! has released a style guide much like the AP Stylebook that offers help for those who write Web content. “The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World” includes useful articles on writing Web content, creating effective headlines, grammar, punctuation and style rules for Web-specific language, and an "Ask an Editor" feature for questions not addressed through the online guide.

What I like about Yahoo!'s style guide is that it takes into account search engine optimization in addition to editors' preference. Mashable brings up an excellent example- according to the AP Stylebook, "e-mail" should still be hyphenated, but in common usage it is often used without the hyphen. Since those who write for the Web have to take into consideration what people are most likely to conduct a search for, a seemingly small distinction like "e-mail" or "email" matters.

The Yahoo! Style Guide is currently available online and will be released in print and for iPad and Kindle on July 6.

No comments: