Meryl's Notes Blog

When I began writing articles about the Internet, World Wide Web, and email, I was unsure of how to punctuate or capitalize such words. Checking the dictionary was fruitless because the words haven’t made it there. I sent an article draft to my sister, my second pair of eyes and a former journalist.

She responded, “You must go buy this book: WIRED STYLE.” As the good little sister I am, I did as she commanded. Immediately, I used the book and it helped me through a few entanglements.

Later, I wrote my first article on grammar and used the book and its companion Web site as the primary source. The article was well received and disliked. Most readers were grateful to have someone clarify how to take care of these techie words. But some were horrified that I used such a resource as a reference instead of the Chicago Manual of Style or other favorite resource.

Wired’s introduction indicates, “…intended to complement those guides by digging into questions that writers and editors confront daily-questions of style and substance that Chicago and AP (not to mention Strunk & White) don’t even imagine.” That’s the reason why I used it as my resource. The others didn’t address the issues I confronted while writing my article.

But should this be the stylebook for everyone? It’s definitely not the book many companies use since many argue against Wired’s choice of usage of words. For example, the infamous “email.” Book says it should be “e-mail.” Many are against typing an extra keystroke for the hyphen.

The book lists ten principles for writing well in the digital age. Five relate to prose style and five cover copy-editing style. Principle #2 encourages the writer to play with voice. Personally, I like the casual style, first-person articles. They’re easy to read and enjoy. philophe.com values Wired’s perspective, but believes they do us a disservice by not explaining that realize content and site infrastructure are separate entities.

I agree with philophe.com that a Web site’s style is determined by its company and not by Wired or anyone else. Wired states “Web” is capitalized when referencing the Web, Web sites, Web pages and so on. I use “Web” in here in meryl world and follow the style of the site for which I write.

Not only it can be used as a style guide or reference, but also as a digital glossary. It includes ASP, grok, IP, MIME, push and more. But one term was odd – Unabomber. Excuse me, what does a lunatic guy who sent bombs to people have to do with technology? Other interesting words are “Pong” and “Tetris.” Yes, they’re talking about the addictive games.

Someone asked how do we punctuate around smileys ? Smileys are made of punctuation marks and if the smiley is at the end of the sentence, it could be confusing with a period, question mark, or exclamation mark immediately after it.

Typically, I add a space after the smiley. Wired Style had a smiley at the end of a sentence and the period came immediate after like so . It’s legible, but what if it’s a short smiley ? I think it depends on Principle #1: The Medium Matters. In an informal email using less strict grammar and style rules, I leave out the sentence ending punctuation mark. If a bigwig national magazine wants an article, then I’d ask for their rules. Make the decision based on the medium and the audience, and then be consistent.

This is a good book to have in your library especially for techie writers. The definitions are useful, but there are free web sites like Webopedia to help. I don’t recommend using this as THE digital style guide, but help you create one. The most important thing is be consistent throughout your writing or web site.

VITAL STATISTICS:
TITLE: Wired Style : Principles of English Usage in the Digital
Age
AUTHORS: Constance Hale (Editor), Jessie Scanlon, Hale Scanlon
PUBLISHER: Broadway Books
PUBLICATION DATE: December 1999
ISBN: 0767903722
FORMAT: Paperback
PAGES: 176
PRICE: US$13

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