Yahoo! just released their Style Guide for writing on the web, and I’m loving it. It’s intended for international writers of English, and focuses on writing for the web — although it’s just as useful for most non-web writing.

As someone who works all the time with non-native writers of English, I’ve learned to be flexible and accommodating about style and usage issues. I just ask for consistency and clarity, with no glaring grammatical mistakes and punctuation errors. And in truth, the same flexibility is needed for working with all the native English writers. The Irish, Australians, Indians, and South Africans (and indeed, the English themselves) all have their particular quirks and styles. You have to just roll with them or you’ll go crazy.

One thing I like about the Yahoo! Style Guide is that it gives me an easy-to-access authority that I can refer people to. People in the US may be familiar with The Chicago Manual of Style, but few people in China have heard of it, and even fewer happen to have a copy laying around.

Another thing I like about Yahoo! Style Guide is that it supports my own quirks and preferences — like putting a space before and after the dash — and provides me with reasons for those preferences. As someone who writes all the time, I’m in the habit of doing certain things. I may have learned to do something from a proofreader years ago, incorporated it, and then forgotten why i do it. So I love the clear explanations and examples that the Style Guide provides:

In a sentence, capitalize the first word after the colon if what follows the colon could function alone as a complete sentence. Use a single space following the colon.

Example
This is it: the chance we’ve been waiting for!
This is it: We’ll never have to work again!

I’m a staunch advocate of the “serial comma,” the comma that should be last in a series, before the “and.” So I’m very happy that the Yahoo! Style Guide advocates it too:

“To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

That classic example–purportedly from a book’s actual dedication page–shows the confusion that can ensue when a comma is omitted before and. Including the comma before and (called a serial comma) clears up the ambiguity.

Follow these rules when writing a series of items:

• In a series consisting of three or more elements, separate the elements with commas. When a conjunction (like and or or) joins the last two elements in a series, include a comma before the conjunction.

Examples
Confirm your name, birth date, and gender.
You may buy our gizmos online, in a store, or by mail.

The only thing I’ve found strange so far, and disagree with, is some of the capitalization rules. For example, they say to capitalize “Internet” and “Ethernet.” On the other hand, “intranet” is not capitalized. I don’t like capitalizing any of them.

The Yahoo! Style Guide is available for purchase as a book, but you can just use it online. Hope you find it as valuable as I do!