by Maxi

Is the Yahoo! Style Guide just another how-to book?

I don’t know. I may read Yahoo’s book and find some great information that will help me. On the other hand, you may read it and find there is nothing new.

I do know that I wish there had been a book on writing for the Internet when I started my web site and blog. In my research, I found many contradictions of what, and what not, to do.

The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World will go on sale July 6, 2010 at $21.99 retail. Amazon will sell it for $13.49 before shipping.

The copy on the back cover reveals that Yahoo has had a set of in-house guidelines they’ve been using for years. So they dressed up the rules, spit-shined everything for the public … and viola. There are also some other tidbits:

• 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

There is one thing that I know about writing. When you put fingers to keyboard … be yourself. Don’t think of the blogger you admire, or someone who is “making it” and you can’t wait to get there, or another person that people always tweet about. The most important opinion in your life belongs to the person looking back in the mirror. If you’re happy with that person, happy with that person’s decisions, happy with what that person thinks—and satisfied with that person’s writing—that’s what really matters.

May Your Glass Always Be Half Full