[WEB4LIB] RE: "Style" sheets

[K.G. Schneider]

> Don't forget the old adage: "Consistency is the bugaboo of small minds."
> I
> think such things as requiring web or Web to be consistent are counter
> productive and overly bureaucratic.  It is nitpicking at its worst.
> 
> Bill Drew

Emerson actually wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." 

He meant what he wrote: he was deriding "foolish" consistency.

I would find it tiresome and distracting if any of the serious publications
I read used the "ransom note" school of copyediting, with random and
capricious word usage.  It gets even worse for anything read online, because
reading online in general is just a little harder than reading paper. 

A reader shouldn't have to process and merge variations on the same term,
and shouldn't be muddled with yawning inconsistencies in grammar and tone,
either. Nattering about the Web, as I am doing on this list, can be casual;
writing for readers demands the kind of attention that can only come from
formal rules-making and serious editorial control. Pick a style guide, pick
a dictionary, and run with it. Find a gap in the rules? Write your own, and
stick with your guns.

As for productivity, my scorn for Wired came less from the ruling (long
overdue, though I'll wait until I see wider adoption) than from the oblique
and unhelpful reference to an exception for the "official World Wide Web." 

Some of the Web4Lib readers have written me off-list to tell me their tales
of woe, in which entire academic departments ground to a halt while debating
Style A versus Style B. I have been there.

Easy-to-follow rules facilitate delegation and speed work effort. Rules also
make it less likely that a senior editor with a head trip can yank
everyone's chain by making random and unpredictable changes and decisions.
For example, it is kind to the reader, the writer, and the editor to adopt
the rule of the "final comma," also known as the Harvard or Oxford comma
(or, I suppose, the LII comma): "style, grammar, content, and punctuation
are important." "CSS, XML, and HTML." "Emerson, Thoreau, and Crawford." Any
time wasted debating commas is true foolishness. 

Keep in mind how little readers have to go on in assessing the credibility
of online resources. Sloppy and inconsistent style works against
establishing the authority of your content. You don't want that, do you? 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com