Help with Writing Online - What Abbreviations or Terminology is Correct?

Have you ever found yourself trying to write an online article and having no luck determining the proper way to abbreviate a word or use slang? For most of us this is inherent in writing and writing articles online are no exception. For help with this, Yahoo has created a "Word List" in "The Yahoo Style Guide - Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World".

Oftentimes, while writing, it is easy to get stumped on appropriate abbreviations or correct spellings or versions of a word to use. The "Word List" by Yahoo takes the most common words or abbreviations that most often present issues for writers.

For those of you who know what I am talking about you also know that these problems arise at the worse time possible. They always seem to occur just as you are on a roll and writing seems easy. Then the roadblock occurs. The "Word List" is fantastic in the sense that by alphabetical order you can quickly reference the word that is holding you up.

An instance of a time the "Word List" came in handy for myself would be in a recent writing I was doing for a work project. Trying to reference a "pull-down menu", I was unsure if I should use drop down menu, drop-down menu I went to the word list and found under drop-down menu a notation to use pull-down menu instead. So while trying to determine if there was a hyphen or not, I in fact learned that I was using the wrong terminology all together.

The example above is one of many times the new Yahoo Word List has proven to be beneficial and useful in my writing. Not only does it help in my online writing but it also helps my everyday correspondence in my job.

Check out the Yahoo Style Guide for yourself. It is sure to help you achieve the status of a professional online writer. Some of the Style Guide can be found online but the book itself can be purchased at most book retail shops including www.amazon.com.