A Style Guide for a New Media

By Marisa Peacock | Published Apr 17, 2008

I love style guides. As a designer, writer and Jane-of-all-trades, it's helpful to know what fonts to use, color palettes to incorporate and abbreviations and acronyms to follow. And yet, as the Web has evolved through its many iterations, we web journalists (and our beloved editors) have relied consistently on style guides developed primarily for print.

Wired.com seeks to change that.

Wired.com's editor-in-chief, Evan Hanson says that his style guide initiative goes beyond “language, grammar and usage” and aims to “provide a fresh, sophisticated look at current issues facing online media.”

The updated stylebook will focus on current Web-publishing issues like anti-spam techniques, online community standards and ways to increase rankings on Internet search engines.

In addition, it will tackle legal issues like copyright infringement and licensing. This isn't your English professor's style guide; instead it's all about “digital technology and the changing culture, and society.”

As many bloggers and online editors know, writing for the Web is different than writing for “traditional” media. The difference has been known to hinder “traditional” journalists from embracing and understanding the significance of Web technologies.

Having a well-informed guide focused on online media should help to bridge the gap between journalism and technology. Over time, we've evolved to understand Web technology — it's time to embrace the editorial implications that it is had as well.