A New Spin on Words Tutorial from the Yahoo! Style Guide

It's been estimated there are 988,968 words in the English language when the reality is no one actually knows. More than likely the list grows every single day with new words now being created from the computer/internet age and other high-tech tools. Speaking of technology, many forms of communication are now heavily relying on web content, which is why there's the Yahoo! Style Guide book that consists of 528 pages. One of its helpful features is The Yahoo! word list tutorial of terms for communications, technology, branding or any other topics. It will better help you learn the standardized way to correctly spell, to capitalize or not to capitalize or utilize a word with or without hyphens when blogging, emailing or creating a website?

For Instance......

A good example would be the word "actor". Previously we would associate this word to mean a male actor only. Now it is used in reference to either gender, not actress for a female anymore. This is very helpful for my Arts & Entertainment writing, because it's much easier to use the simple word "actor" from now on. While on the subject of A&E, I never knew if the abbreviation for compact disc was capitalized as "CD" or simply the lowercased "cd". It is the former one with no hyphens. If you want to make it plural then it is "CDs". Another instance I always assumed was the word "Baby Boomer". It was my impression this was capitalized since it refers to a proper name for a generation born after World War II much like Gen-X are children of the baby boomers. However, when it is used as a noun it is in lowercase "baby boomer". If you use the word as an adjective it is hyphenated "baby-boomer."

Put to Good Use

You can get started using the Yahoo! Word list by going to the homepage for the Yahoo! Style Guide.

Go to the right side at the bottom of the page where you will see the main title: Word List.

There are two sub-titles listed as "The Yahoo! word list" and "Build your own word list". The first sub-title is for your own quick referencing, especially if you're at a different computer.

The last sub-title is where you can download this complete word list onto your computer in four formats: XML, Rich text, Microsoft Word document and Microsoft Word Open XML document.

AC Contributor's Interview with Christopher Barr, Yahoo! Managing Editor

Sabah Karimi conducted a highly informative interview with Christopher Barr, one of the managing editors at Yahoo!, to get more insight into the Yahoo! Style Guide. One of the burning questions she asked was how much of the Style Guide material was available online? He responded by having certain material available on the Web would allow for updates not conducive to print. This would include the word list as new technologies develop new words are bound to form. It is then necessary to know the correct way to utilize the word and to spell it out properly too. This is certainly a book worth getting your hands on right away, The Yahoo! Style Guide. It should be right up there with your dictionary and thesaurus.

SOURCES:

Jesse Sheidlower, "Word Count", Slate

The Yahoo! Style Guide, Yahoo!

The Yahoo! Word List, Yahoo!

Lisa Pinkerton, "Using the Yahoo! Style Guide" Word List", Associated Content from Yahoo!

Sabah Karimi, "Exclusive Interview with Yahoo! Managing Editor Chris Barr", The AC Weekly