The Yahoo! Style Guide - Chris Barr and the Senior Editors of Yahoo!

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The Yahoo! Style Guide

The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World

Chris Barr and the Senior Editors of Yahoo!

St. Martin's Griffin, July 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-56984-6, ISBN10: 0-312-56984-X,
7 1/2 x 9 1/8 inches, 528 pages, Includes 100 black-and-white illustrations and charts,
Trade Paperback, $21.99

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The rapid growth of the Web has meant having to rely on style guides intended for print publishing, but these guides do not address the new challenges of communicating online. From Yahoo!, a leader in online content and one of the most visited Internet destinations in the world, comes the definitive reference on the essential elements of Web style for writers, editors, bloggers, and students.

With topics that range from the basics of grammar and punctuation to Web-specific ways to improve writing for the web, this comprehensive resource will help students:

-          Shape text for online reading
-          Construct clear and compelling copy
-          Write eye-catching and effective headings
-          Develop a website’s unique voice
-          Streamline text for mobile users
-          Optimize webpages to boost chances of appearing in search results
-          Create better blogs and newsletters
-          Learn easy fixes for writing errors
-          Write clear user-interface text

This essential sourcebook—based on internal editorial practices that have helped Yahoo! writers and editors for the last fifteen years—is now ultimate sourcebook for students of the Web.

Praise

"Yahoo!'s editors have given the rules of the writing road a smart and timely reboot. It's Strunk and White for the online world."—Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post

"Do you have an online style? You need one. People judge your writing, and if you'd rather not be a n00b, here's a great place to start."—Seth Godin, blogger and founder of Squidoo.com

"Yahoo! confounded the copy editors when it put unbridled excitement in its name. Back in 1996, for the first edition of Wired Style, we decided such idiosyncrasies were part of digital-age style. Today, with The Yahoo! Style Guide, the Web publisher has gone from renegade to rule maker. Its guide is a one-stop shop for those publishing on the Web."—Constance Hale, author of Wired Style and Sin and Syntax and editor of sinandsyntax.com

"An excellent and eminently useful book with many compelling examples of rewrites. While rewriting content for usability will hugely increase a website's business value, the word list alone can save you the cost of the book by eliminating wasted time arguing over proper usage."—Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., Principal of Nielsen Norman Group, and other of Eyetracking Web Usability

"The first guide of its kind to focus on the specific issues associated with developing content for the online medium . . . Yahoo!’s core team of editors . . . revisited the company’s in-house style guide, addressed new concepts for online writing, and re-examined the old ones. They divided the guide into six sections covering not only the basics of grammar and punctuation, but also issues that even seasoned print editors and writers making the move to online writing struggle with, including creating accessible websites, minimizing legal risk on a website, and improving a site’s rank in search results . . . Equally important, The Yahoo! Style Guide shows how to write for an international audience, an audience that has no borders, significant because the Web has become a one-stop shop for people communicating with others around the globe. The guide is an essential tool."—Business Wire

About the Author(s)

By Yahoo! and Chris Barr

The Yahoo! Style Guide is the work of many Yahoo! contributors, including past and present editors within Yahoo!’s editorial department, led by Chris Barr, senior editorial director. Find The Yahoo! Style Guide online at http://styleguide.yahoo.com.

I-WRITE FOR AN ONLINE AUDIENCE
1. Write for the Web
2. Identify Your Audience
3. Define Your Voice
4. Construct Clear, Compelling Copy

II-SPEAK TO YOUR ENTIRE AUDIENCE
5. Be Inclusive, Write for the World
6. Make Your Site Accessible to

III-WRITE UI TEXT, EMAIL, AND MOBILE-FRIENDLY CONTENT
7. Write Clear User-Interface Text
8. Write Engaging Email and Newsletters
9. Streamline Text for Mobile Devices

IV-MANAGE THE MECHANICS
10. Punctuate Proficiently
11. Treat Abbreviations, Capitalization, and Titles Consistently
12. Apply a Consistent Style for Numbers

V-CLEAN UP YOUR COPY
13. Shorten and Strengthen Sentences
14. Avoid Common Pitfalls in Word Choice, Grammar, and Spelling
15. Proofread and Test Before You Publish

VI-RESOURCES
16. Get Familiar with Basic Webpage Coding
17. Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
18. Understand the Basics of U.S. Law for Online Content
19. Keep a Word List

Exercise Answer Keys
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

The Yahoo! Style Guide

Praise

About the Author(s)

Table of Contents