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OuterNotes: Online Style Guides
http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/ Sun Microsystems usually conjures up visions of servers rather than verbs, but the folks in Sunnyvale have just come out with a very useful guide to writing specifically for the Web. Among its observations: reading from computer screens is 25 percent slower than from paper; thus Web content should therefore have half the word count of its printed equivalent. It's an invaluable aid to both freelance writers transitioning from print to the Web and online editors who want to increase site usability. --Peggy LeTrent Copy Editors List Their Biggest Gripes... http://ajr.newslink.org/ajrasksul00.html This article is highly recommended to anyone who wants to spare their next submission a close encounter with he Grammar Police. Bridget Gutierrez of the American Journalism Review recently asked copy editors at five major American publications to list the most recurrent malapropisms to cross their desks, and the results make for amusing (if somewhat disconcerting) reading. It seems that far too many writers can't distinguish between "that," "which," and "who"; some habitually confuse "forego" (to go before) with "forgo" (to do without), and others regularly confound "ironic" with "coincidental." Other frequent errors include: referring to a corporation in the plural form, confusing "farther" with "further" and abusing the term "hopefully." --Steve Baldwin ...As The Chicago Manual of Style Goes Interactive http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq.html It's not the full text of the authoritatize magazine style guide, but something perhaps more personally pertinetn. The publication's editors have begun to answer selected e-mail queries about new and recurring style conundrums. It won't replace the paper copy (which you can order online from the same page), but it is worth a visit to remain as current (or is that au courant?) as possible. --Gian Trotta Strunk's Elements of Style Stand the Test of Time... http://134.117.206.17/www/tools/writing/style/all.html No list of style guides is complete without a mention of Cornell University Professor William J. Strunk's "Elements of Style" Although first published in 1918, the unique balance of authority and utility -- the good professor was never above bending a rule for clarity's sake -- makes him still relevant to Web writers and editors. The brief but effective Elementary Rules of Usage and Composition, Style Elements, and his list of frequently misused and misspelled words are a must-read for any editor in any era. --Gian Trotta ...And Traditional Grammar's Drop-downs Will Pick Up Your Skills http://www.engl.niu.edu/dhardy/grammarbook/title.html Northern Illinois University English Professor Donald Hardy's "Traditional Grammar: An Interactive Book" provides a well-crafted dropdown menu that leads to quick and clear explanaitons of common grammatical pitfalls. Noting that "it is impossible to understand some of the more complex prescriptive errors, such as misplaced and dangling modifiers, without an understanding of basic syntactic structure," Hardy provides masterful lessons in grammar, punctuation and word classes, tense, aspect, voice, sentence structure, clausal and punctuation errors and more -- and the interactive exercises at the end of each section provide an easy way to reinforce these valuable lessons. --Gian Trotta The Slot: A Curmudgeon's Guide to Style http://www.theslot.com Bill Walsh, a full-time copy editor at the Washington Post and author of "Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print -- and How to Avoid Them" has been running The Slot since 1995. While much of the material that made this site appealing to language buffs in those early days -- including "The Curmudgeon's Stylebook" -- has been removed at the behest of his new publisher, Walsh's weekly-updated "Sharp Points" essays continue to provide lively, often-barbed discussions of contemporary style and usage issues that are packed with valuable, expert advice. --Steve Baldwin Copyeditor.com's Worth a Quick Visit http://www.copyeditor.com Every writer needs a good copy editor, and every copy editor and freelancer could use Copy Editor: Language News for the Publishing Profession. While the site is mostly an advertisement for the print newsletter, the online site is worth visiting for the high-quality part-time, full-time, and telecommuting job listings and its strong selection of style guides and editor associations. If you opt to subscribe to the print newsletter, $69.00 a year will get you six issues full of industry news, job and workshop announcements, features about the use of words (e.g. Frankenfood vs. genetically modified food) and grammar issues (ever heard of the formulaic subjunctive?). --Melanie Zoltan Edit-Work.com: Two Texans' Straight Talk on Style
Whether you're editing a personal home page or a large company Web site,
Edit-Work.com is a must-bookmark if you want to get your message across
efficiently and concisely. Renee Hopkins, a former Dallas Morning News
Editor, and Tom Kinsey, a well-traveled technical writer, have teamed up
to produce a no-nonsense, easily navigable site full of sage advice. The
eight-step content-production checklist is a time- (and could be a
life-) saver for managing editors, and their section on how to create --
and when to deviate from -- your own publication's in-house style guide
further sets this site apart from dry linklists. An e-mail update
notifier and discussion lists lets you track this talented duo's new
offerings.
www.telp.com/editing/sfindex.htm Tom Tadfor Little organized this collaborative effort from the now-defunct Copyediting-l mailing list's contributors into a style guide that includes votes and comments from hundreds of editors on some of the stickiest style points. You'll find guidance (and an entertaining mix dissenting opinions) on conundrums particular to Web writing such as acronyms, apostrophes, possessives, split infinitives and dangling participles. As an example, 60 editors voted to keep the hyphen in "e-mail"; 24 voted to trash the dash. On a less metaphysical level, the sections devoted to work rates and pay scales for editors are also worth a read for anyone pricing their services or staffing a department. --Mariateresa Thiery A Professor Targets Common Errors in English... http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html Dr. Paul Brians' award-winning "Common Errors in English" site has been updated only sporadically since its inception in 1997, but its well-presented content has stood the test of time. It's idiosyncratic and does not pretend to be totally comprehensive; rather, he focuses on pet peeves in usage. An easy-access A-Z list of Common Errors that assists you in improving your American English usage; he also provides other good resources for UK English, English as a second-language (ESL), grammar and writing. All are available as a single ASCII text file for offline reference. --Mariateresa Thiery ...And Another Helps You Master 'Notorious Confusables' http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/notorious.htm Professor Charles Darling of Capital Community College in Hartford, CT provides daily update to this site devoted to all aspects of grammar. The "Notorious Confusables" list is especially useful; 270 often-misued words are used in the same sentence, allowing the reader to immediately grasp their different meanings. Passing the mouse-arrow over a highlighted word will make a brief definition (based on the Tenth Edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary) of that particular word appear in the status-line of your browser, and some sentences are accompanied by recordings of the sample sentences -- especially helpful for quasi-homophonic confusables like "allude" and "elude" and "imminent" and "eminent." --Mariateresa Thiery Grammar Slammer Picks Up the (Spell)Check http://englishplus.com/grammar/ Grammar checkers often fail to catch all errors, and when they do, they're decidedly cryptic on how to fix them. Enter the Grammar Slammer from English Plus+. While the site won't win any design prizes (who needs a fancy interface when you're on deadline?), the well-organized listings for common grammar and style mistakes provide precise and timely answers. The site itself is free, but a downloadable version -- which mimics the Windows help file format -- is also available for a $25.00 registration fee. --Debbie Cissell Grammar Now: Instant Answers to Your Writing Woes http://www.grammarnow.com/ If you have a specific grammar, composition, research or formatting question, you'll be wowed by grammarnow.com's unique interactivity. Webmistress Linda M. DeVore, a doctoral candidate in American Literature at the University of South Florida, has included an icon that displays her availability to immediately field your questions. When she's not in, you can submit your question via e-mail; answers are promised within 24 hours. Like our previous selections in this issues, there's also a good selection of writer’s resources and links that could keep you from having to call on Ms. DeVore except in extreme cases. --Max Kovins OuterNotes is produced using the OuterForce Platform, which allows publishers to easily recruit and manage remote and freelance content creation and export it into their publishing platform of choice. For more information, see http://www.outerforce.com. Copyright 2000 by OuterNotes. All rights reserved. OuterNotes is a trademark of OuterForce Systems, Inc. Return to Main Archive Page |