Online Writing

Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC March/April 2003	Online Writing: Style Guides to the Rescue

	by Scott Wallace EBSTC Member
	Think of it as the perplexicon of technology—that vocabulary of slippery new technical terms that can turn a web document into an editorial minefield. These are words that, until they’ve been around long enough to find their way into glossaries and/or style guides, can confound our attempts to spell, punctuate, capitalize, and use them correctly. The first two articles in this series addressed a number of such words—Web/web, dialup/dial up, logon/log on, backup/back up, and others—many of which are treated differently depending on the parts of speech they occupy in a particular context. Some of the issues confronting the writer, however, have to do not with individual words but with broader questions of editorial style. Consider, for example: Should you enclose web site names in quotes? Italicize them? Neither? What about the titles of individual articles on a site? What’s the right way to cite material from online sources? How do you indicate the location of a file several levels deep in a multilayered web hierarchy? Do you italicize URLs and e-mail addresses? Include http:// in a URL? Should you use the U.S. or international forms for dates and times? Measurements? Currencies? The style guide you use should address related issues like these that arise in the course of your work. If your employer (or client) has a style manual, you’re obligated to use it. But if the company doesn’t have a style guide, or if its style guide isn’t up to the task, you need to adopt one that meets your needs—or append the one you’re using or distill your own from other sources.
To Choose, Adapt, or Create?	Ideally, you’ll find a published style guide that works for you. Choose one that’s a good fit for your audience. For example, if your company develops software for the Windows platform, you’ll use the Microsoft Manual of Style (see Style Guide Resources). If you’re writing about an Apple or Unix application, however, you won’t find a similar reference work. You’ll need to do some research. Should you find that you need to refresh an existing style guide, or cobble together one of your own, take your cue from other materials published by reputable sources for your intended audience. Start with those produced by and for the company you’re working for. If you’re targeting Apple users, read Apple product documentation and peruse the Apple web site; visit the sites of other companies that develop products for the Apple operating system. Alternatively, learn if there’s an industry association or professional organization in the field you’re working in that has a style manual you could adopt, or adapt. If such a group exists but doesn’t have its own style guide, study print and online materials it publishes. If you’re creating your own style guide, a computer dictionary or technology glossary—especially one developed for your industry—is an excellent starting point.
Making Style Invisible	There's nothing more essential to good writing than finding the right style. You'll know you've found the right style for your audience if it's "transparent"—that is, if your readers are unaware of it. A style that's transparent to the tattoo-and-earring set would be jarringly obvious to the pinstripes-and-wingtips crowd, and vice versa. Transparent style doesn't draw attention to itself. Style that does comes across as self-conscious and contrived. That's not good writing. There's a lot of editorial terrain between the Chicago Manual of Style and Wired Style. Our job as web writers and editors is to know what part of that terrain our readers are most comfortable on. It's from there that we can communicate most effectively.
Resources	Check out this list of Style Guide Resources.
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