Rating: 
Summary: A must for content authors or managers
Review: As an intranet administrator, I was looking for some guidance for communicating best practices for presenting content online. I stumbled across Gerry McGovern's website and the book "The Web Content Style Guide." Intrigued with the table of contents, I purchased a copy. It is definately worth purchasing for anyone dealing with content, or charged with communicating best practices to other content authors, editors and producers.Besides the A to Z sections of style (a book within it's self), the book also includes best practices for presenting text, headlines, etc., akin to the preachings of Jakob Nielsen. Again, I strongly recommend you consider this style guide as part of your reference collection.
Rating: 
Summary: i was waiting for a style guide - here it is
Review: for years I was an enthusiastic users of the economist style guide - it is very crisp. It doesn't tell you how to write - just sets out some issues about commonly mispelled and misused words, helps you avoid cliche and pomposity. It quietly makes you a better writer.
The web though was different. It pulled you into all kinds of cod-cool flourishes and pointless-demotic.
Now McGovern, who also has a useful email column, has filled the void and helped set us straight, providing for the web what the economist did for print.
He points out that the style and quality of our writing is as important on the web as it is in print, because whatever you are told, people come to the web and whatever they think they do, they read. The way you write is different, and McGovern makes some useful pointers about how to do it, but he also points out how to screw it up, with all the usual web stuff - odd and changing colours, excessive flash - achingly slow intros - and tells you how to avoid it.
It isn't as if he wants all sites to look like the front cover of the wall street journal - just acres of windy prose - but he knows how to make a site readable - and that's what we want.
I think it worth every tax-deductible penny - and I'm tight.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this for your reference shelf.
Review: I have a list of books that I recommend when lecturing on web content on campus and at conferences... this is now on the list. This is a great reference guide that will appeal to web writers of all experience levels. The first two sections are a must read for everyone and the A to Z guide will be particularly helpful to the less technical. If you are a content designer or manager, you will find yourself pulling a quote now and then to backup a point you are trying to make.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this for your reference shelf.
Review: I have a list of books that I recommend when lecturing on web content on campus and at conferences... this is now on the list. This is a great reference guide that will appeal to web writers of all experience levels. The first two sections are a must read for everyone and the A to Z guide will be particularly helpful to the less technical. If you are a content designer or manager, you will find yourself pulling a quote now and then to backup a point you are trying to make.
Rating: 
Summary: only the first 30 pages are useful
Review: I read this book and I love to read, I really expected something else, probably I was fooled by the description. It may help otehr people, but read a few example pages before.
Rating: 
Summary: First 30 pages are all you really need.
Review: I'm a huge fan of McGovern, but this book isn't worth the money. You can actually read the first section of the book - the part I really loved - at his web site for free: www.gerrymcgovern.com. The "sample web style guide" at the end of the book is woefully underwritten. Buy CONTENT CRITICAL instead.
Rating:
Summary: First 30 pages are all you really need.
Review: I'm a huge fan of McGovern, but this book isn't worth the money. You can actually read the first section of the book - the part I really loved - at his web site for free: www.gerrymcgovern.com. The "sample web style guide" at the end of the book is woefully underwritten. Buy CONTENT CRITICAL instead.
Rating:
Summary: First 30 pages are all you really need.
Review: I'm a huge fan of McGovern, but this book isn't worth the money. You can actually read the first section of the book - the part I really loved - at his web site for free: www.gerrymcgovern.com. The "sample web style guide" at the end of the book is woefully underwritten. Buy CONTENT CRITICAL instead.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent and informative. A superb reference.
Review: If you're looking for a cybertized version of the Chicago Manual of Style, this isn't it. But if you need to migrate your writing and editing skills to the Web, there's no better place to start than the Web Content Style Guide. I frequently lecture on content development, usability, and information architecture. This book is always on my list of recommended reading. In addition to great writing guidelines and advice, there's also valuable information about the related issues of usability, navigation, and design. This is particularly important since many writers ignore these subjects thinking they are too technical or outside their area of responsibility (think again!). Keep the WCSG close at hand and your work can't help but improve.
Rating: 
Summary: Okay, But Not Spectacular
Review: McGovern's book is okay, but I liked Michael Levine's Guerrilla PR: Wired better.
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