Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age

Rating:
Summary: Oh. My. GAWD.
Review: Having read through the first edition, I looked forward to the next, which was supposed to be organized like a real style guide (read: The AP Stylebook and Libel Manual) and less like an in-your-face, smarmy declaration of war against English. At least the editors of Wired accomplished that much, renaming some key writing principles like "Screw the Rules" with "Be Irreverent."

But you really have to wonder about a style guide which quotes Entertainment Weekly -- that's right, Entertainment Weekly, that standard bearer of educational enlightenment -- not once, but TWICE on its back cover. This means that the publishers had a hard time coming up with complementary quotes to fill in the space. I work as a copywriter for a book publisher, and to quote the same publication twice on the same cover is simply bad, bad form -- only the most desperate of publishers do so.

Little wonder why EW reviewed this book -- after all, Wired Style is SO funny, like the little jab it takes at hackers when defining "Trojan Horse":

"The work of dark-side hackers. A seemingly innocuous program that hides a malicious virus.... the word is proof that hackers read the classics."

Ha. Ha. Isn't that smart? Because we all thought hackers hadn't read the classics, and wouldn't know what a Trojan Horse is. You'd never find this kind of "humor," this smartalecky take on English usage, in the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage.

It IS useful to have an guide to help explain such terms as "Trojan Horse," "Watermark," and "dpi" in context of the Web and computers (thus the two stars), but Wired Style has a long way to go before it can compare to the authoritative works such as the NYT and AP guides -- which do not, despite Wired Style's continued claim in both editions of their guide, force writers to call Bill Gates "William H. Gates III, chairman of Microsoft Corporation." (This claim is based on a general rule for identifying people who are not immediately recognizable to the general public -- Bill Gates doesn't qualify. The editors at Wired really should know better.)

Rating:
Summary: Not the greatest book, but still indispensible
Review: There's no doubt that the Wired Style guide is not the best style guide ever written; that said, with Chicago and AP still shockingly behind on integrating usages of Internet and technology-based words into their guides, this book is absolutely indispensible. AP might give three varients of an online word, but Wired gives a more complete listing of all known varients. Whether you like it or not, if you write about the Internet, or ever have to explain Web strategy to someone in writing, you need this book. The other sources out there just don't cut it.

And, as a bonus, if you use a word like "usability," and everyone looks at you funny, this book gives you a backup reference to point to, so you don't look like the one inventing words. (This has in fact happened to me, and it made me question who could possibly not have heard of usability in this day and age -- oh well.)

Rating:
Summary: Indeed a bit pompous, but has still a bigger issue
Review: Think of "Wired Style" as the 'Chicago Manual of Style' (well, sort of) as stated by Newsweek back in 1999 when this book first came out, and you probably by now can realize where the fundamental problem of the book is. While it does come accross as a bit pompous at times, indeed, the biggest issue it has is the fact that it hasn't been updated since its first edition, five years ago, an entire lifetime by Internet standards. As a result, several ubiquitous terms that you run into everywhere today are missing: blog, RSS, CSS, XHTML, flat panel, and the list goes on and on. So, as much as they ditch the more conservative AP Stylebook, it is not that much better as a tool for editors/writers working in the "digital age", so I don't see much of a point in buying it at this point any more.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding e-reference
Review: This is one of my all-time favorite style guides. Compact, up-to-date, informational yet fun to read. Wired Style answers questions that apparently never occurred to Strunk and White (or to Chicago Manual of Style). The answers are not as prescriptive as those in some style guides, but are written more like "guides" that reveal the thought processes behind the suggestions.