A Partial List of Style Guides Everyone Should Read

Before deciding to create The Responsible Communication Style Guide, I spent years looking for a style guide that filled that niche. I didn’t find one style guide that covered topics like race and gender and health all in one place.

Instead, I found dozens of style guides, covering a huge range of topics. I compiled this list as a starting point for folks who want to explore these topics and who want to dive a little deeper.

This list is really just a starting point, though. For The Responsible Communication Style Guide, we’re going to focus on five specific facets of identity: sex, gender, race, religion, and health and well-being. Within each of those sections, we’ll suggest key words and phrases to use when discussing these topics. We’ll also have a set of essays giving broader advice about writing inclusively. Throughout this process, we’re using technology as a lens to focus our coverage.

Each section editor has lived experience with the topic they will cover, as well as experience with writing and an understanding of our intersectional approach.

And if you’re interested in helping us fund a new style guide that covers identity with an intersectional approach, check out the Kickstarter for The Responsible Communication Style Guide. (Pro tip: at the $15 level, you’ll get a digital copy of our new style guide so that you can use it in your own writing as soon as possible.

AAJA Guide to Covering Asian America

Prepared by the Asian American Journalists Association. Covers terminology for covering topics of interest to Asian Americans.

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JAPANESE NAMES:

In Japan, typically family name first, personal name second. But in the United States, Western word order is common. Women’s names often end in -ko, or “child,” as in Michiko.

American Sociological Association Style Guide

(Link to Bookshop listing!)

Prepared by the American Sociological Association. Covers style and terminology used in the publications of the ASA.

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Race and Ethnicity

The classification and terminology of race and ethnicity are complex and have changed over time. Avoid racial and ethnic stereotyping of groups. Authors using racial and ethnic terms should aim to be as specific and precise as possible when identifying a person’s origin or group. For example, Cuban is more specific than Hispanic; Japanese is more specific than Asian.

Apple Style Guide

(Direct link to PDF!)

Prepared for internal use at Apple. Covers brand and company-specific terminology.

connector

Use to refer only to an item that can be plugged into a receptacle (such as a slot, port, or socket). Use the following terminology: edge connector: the connector on the edge of a peripheral card; fits into a slot minicircular connector: an 8-pin connector [Don’t use mini-DIN.] plug: a connector with prongs or pins In user materials, describe connectors by their shape and size, by the icon that appears on the connector, or in another way appropriate to the context. The user should be able to identify the connector easily even if she or he doesn’t know the terminology. Chapter 2 Style and usage 38 Avoid obscure names such as power input unit in favor of more direct terms, such as plug. Don’t use male or female to describe types of connectors.

BuzzFeed Style Guide

Prepared by Emmy Favilla and Megan Paolone for BuzzFeed. Covers publication-specific terminology and style.

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LGBT Identification:

• Unless you already know based on research, it should be standard to ask how people identify themselves: gay, bi, genderqueer, queer, trans, etc.
• A person can be trans WITHOUT also being gay or lesbian. Don’t assume.
• Use “cisgender” (rather than “non-trans”) to refer to a person who is not transgender.

The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style

(Link to Bookshop listing!)

Prepared by Robert Hudson for publication by Zondervan. Covers terminology and styles used by the Christian publishing industry.

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you, You (deity pronoun, second person)

Lowercase the second person of the deity pronoun as you would lowercase the third person. An exception is sometimes made in books of devotion or prayer when the capitalized, second-person pronoun is used to address God directly. (For more detail, see “Deity Pronoun, The” as well as “thou, thee, thy, thine.”)

Disability Language Style Guide

Prepared by the National Center on Disability and Journalism. Covers recommended language with an emphasis on specificity.

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Handicap/handicapped

Background: The Oxford English dictionary defines a handicap as “a condition that restricts a person’s ability to function physically, mentally or socially.”

NCDJ Recommendation: Do not describe a person as handicapped unless it is central to the story. Avoid using handicap and handicapped when describing a person. Instead, refer to the person’s specific condition. The terms are still widely used when citing laws, regulations, places or things, such as handicapped parking, although many prefer the term accessible parking.

Conforms to AP style

The Diversity Style Guide

Prepared by Rachele Kanigel, for the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism. Covers a variety of terminology; however, this style guide is sourced from a variety of other style guides, rather than in-house development.

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gender-neutral pronouns

Some people don’t feel that traditional gender pronouns, such as she/her and he/him, reflect their gender identities. Transgender, genderqueer and other people who step outside the male-female gender paradigm often adopt new pronouns for themselves. If a person doesn’t identify as male or female, it’s best to ask which pronouns they prefer.

The Economist Style Guide

Prepared by The Economist for its writers. Covers publication-specific information and style.

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Gender

Gender is nowadays used in several ways. One is common in feminist writing, where the term has a technical meaning. “One is not born a woman, one becomes one,” argued Simone de Beauvoir: in other words, one chooses one’s gender. In such a context it would be absurd to use the word sex; the term must be gender. But, in using it thus, try to explain what you mean by it. Even feminists do not agree on a definition.

Gawker.com Style Guide

Prepared by Lockhart Steele, Choire Sicha, and Gina Trapani for Gawker.com. Covers publication-specific information and grammar.

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WORDS AND PHRASES THAT YOU MAY NEVER USE

A long list, sure, but it is topped by “interesting” and “funny” and “of interest.” If it’s funny or interesting, that’ll prove itself, and it’s actually not funny or interesting if you have to describe it as such. See also: “Arguably.” (Fuck no.) This list also includes “lede” and “hed” and other sorts of made up journo-words. Gag. Finally, do not ever suggest in your writing that you do not care about something, or are bored by it, or that you do not know about something, or that you are above it. If you don’t care, are bored, or are confused, or the like, don’t write about it. Or fake it. Nothing is more off-putting for a reader than arriving at a post pre-bored and pre-disinterested. No apologies, no regrets.

GLAAD Media Reference Guide

Prepared by GLAAD. Covers terminology for “reporting on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives, issues, and stories.” Note, portions of this guide is sourced from the AP and New York Times style guides, rather than in-house development.

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Coming Out

A lifelong process of self-acceptance. People forge a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender identity first to themselves and then they may reveal it to others. Publicly sharing one’s identity may or may not be part of coming out.

Media Takes: On Aging

(Direct link to PDF!)

Prepared by the International Longevity Center and Aging Services of California. Covers terminology for the “accurate portrayal of aging.”

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Handicap

Not a synonym for disability; describes a condition or barrier imposed by society, the environment or by one’s own self; can be used when citing laws and situations but should not be used to describe a disability; for example, the stairs are a handicap for him

NABJ Style Guide

Prepared by members of the National Association of Black Journalists, including Jerry McCormick and Angela Dodson. Covers “terms and language usage of special interest or relevance to our membership and our community.”

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African, African American, black

Hyphenate when using African American as an adjective. Not all black people are African Americans (if they were born outside of the United States). Let a subjects preference determine which term to used. In a story in which race is relevant and there is no stated preference for an individual or individuals, use black because it is an accurate description of race. Be as specific as possible in honoring preferences, as in Haitian American, Jamaican American or (for a non-U.S. citizen living in the United States) Jamaican living in America. Do not use race in a police description unless the report is highly detailed and gives more than just the persons skin color. In news copy, aim to use black as an adjective, not a noun. Also, when describing a group, use black people instead of just blacks. In headlines, blacks, however, is acceptable.

NIDA Media Guide

(Direct link to PDF!)

Prepared by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Covers terminology for policy discussions, scientific discussions, and health discussions, as well as media resources.

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Cognitive-behavioral treatments

A set of treatments that focus on modifying thinking, motivation, coping mechanisms, and/or choices made by people.

NLGJA Stylebook

Prepared by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Provides terminology to improve “inclusive coverage of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, includes entries on words and phrases that have become common, and features greater detail for earlier entries.”

Highlight:

coming out

Short for “coming out of the closet.” Accepting and letting others know of one’s previously hidden sexual orientation or gender identity.

A Progressive’s Style Guide

(Direct link to PDF!)

Prepared by Hanna Thomas and Anna Hirsch for SumOfUs. Covers core terminology for progressive activists in order to combat discriminatory language. Note, Hanna Thomas wrote about her experiences creating the guide.

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Disability

Most times there is no need to refer to a person’s disability, but when the need arises, choose acceptable terminology for the specific disability or use the term preferred by the individual.

Race Reporting Guide

(Direct link to PDF!)

Prepared by Race Forward, the Center for Racial Justice Innovation. Covers terminology for “reporting on specific racial and ethnic groups. Also includes terminology and practices to avoid.

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Ethnicity

A socially constructed grouping of people based on culture, tribe, language, national heritage, and/or religion. It is often used interchangeably with race and/or national origin, but should be instead considered as an overlapping, rather than identical, category. See the section “Covering Key Issues with a Racial Lens” and the term “Racial & Ethnic Categories.”

Religion Stylebook

Prepared by Religion Newswriters Foundation. Covers “the major religions, denominations and religious organizations journalists often encounter.”

Highlight:

Bible Belt

Areas of the United States that are noted for a prevalence of strict evangelical Christian teachings, particularly in the South and Midwest. Writer H.L. Mencken coined the phrase in 1925 while reporting on the Scopes Trial in Tennessee. It can be considered offensive in some contexts so the term should be used carefully.

Style Guide for NASA History Authors and Editors

Prepared by Steve Garber for NASA History. Covers preferred language, units of measurement, and publication-specific information.

Highlight:

Manned Space Program vs. Human Space Program:

All references referring to the space program should be non-gender specific (e.g. human, piloted, un-piloted, robotic). The exception to the rule is when referring to the Manned Spacecraft Center, the predecessor to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, or any other official program name or title that included “manned” (e.g. Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight).

Style Guide: Reporting on Mental Health

(Direct link to PDF!)

Prepared by TEAM Up and the California Mental Health Services Authority. Covers preferred language and language to be avoided.

Highlight:

relevance

Do not assume that there is a link between an event that seems irrational and the mental health of someone in the story. Not preferred: “A man whose neighbors said he seemed depressed left his sprinklers on for days, leading to neighborhood flooding.” Preferred: “Sprinklers that appeared to have been left on for more than 80 hours led to damage in three nearby houses, water officials said.”

The Supreme Court’s Style Guide

(Link to Bookshop listing!)

Prepared by Jack Metzler with the Office of the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States. Covers terminology, cases, and styles used in Supreme Court decisions.

Highlight:

Repeating citations

(a) “Hereinafter” shortened form. If in the text or (more commonly) in a footnote frequent citations are to be made of a certain secondary source, it is often desirable to use a shortened form for the subsequent citations. This is generally done with a parenthetical that immediately follows the citation of the source and precedes all other parentheticals. Where a specific page is cited in the subsequent reference, do not then use “at” or “p.” Simply use the shortened form followed by the page number.

The Yahoo! Style Guide

(Link to Bookshop listing!)

Prepared by Chris Barr for Yahoo! and revised for print. Covers style for materials written for online publication.

No highlight available.

Looking for design or development style guides and pattern libraries? Start with these posts!

The Responsible Communication Style Guide: A Kickstarter and an Explanation

I’m working on The Responsible Communication Style Guide with Recompiler Media. This project is something I’ve been thinking about for years and I wanted to write up how I got to this place.

Our Kickstarter is here — backing at the $15 level is the fastest way to get a copy of The Responsible Communication Style Guide to use in your own work.

CONTENT NOTES

This post is over 2,500 words. There’s some heavy emotional stuff in here (lived experience + the Holocaust, how language affects our lives, and diversity in technology). I do hope you’ll read the whole thing.

How to Screw Up as a Journalist in One Easy Step

I screwed up early in my career as a freelance writer: I conducted an email interview with an individual named “Chris” for an article I was working on. In the article, I referred to Chris with a male pronoun. My source emailed me immediately after reading the article to say that “Chris” was short for “Christine” and that she would appreciate me fixing the error.

Chris was super nice about the whole thing, making me think that I wasn’t the first person to make this particular mistake. Now I do some obsessive Google-ing if I’m not sure how to describe a person just from an interview — though even Google can’t always tell me enough information.

Ever since, I’ve also been looking for a guide or workshop or some sort of education on how to ask questions about identity without being offensive. Sure, asking someone their pronouns is one of my standard interview questions (along with how to spell their name and what their professional title is), but that’s not enough.

  • How do you even begin to ask a trans person about referring to them by their dead name if you’re writing about them during a time when they still used that name?
  • How do you make sure that unconscious bias doesn’t influence your writing?
  • How do you write about someone engaged in activism without bringing an internet shitstorm down on their heads?
  • Heck, how do you even determine if you’re only telling stories about people like you or if you’re finding diverse sources or stories?

I don’t have the one true answer to all these questions. Figuring out how to handle these sorts of topics requires both empathy and context. Context, in turn, requires lived experience.

What is ‘lived experience?’ Lived experience, or the experiences, emotions, and impressions of a person living as a member of a minority, is easily dismissed as a buzzword from a women’s studies class. Hanging out in tech circles, I mostly hear people talking about their lived experiences and how they differ from what other people may see (such as a woman talking about an act of discrimination, only to be told by a man that he’s never seen any problems in the industry). While I don’t think that this sort of gaslighting should be dismissed, there are even bigger dangers to ignoring others’ lived experience: My paternal grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He spent six years in concentration camps. When he was liberated in 1945, he was 18. He weighed 85 pounds. In the years that followed, my grandfather encountered Holocaust deniers. These people told my grandfather that the hell he went through never happened.

I don’t want to turn this blog post into an example of Godwin’s Law, but every time I hear someone discounting lived experience, I see them become a little more willing to accept anti-Semitism and other bigotry. Suffice it to say that I strongly believe in the importance of involving someone with lived experience when creating training materials about their identity, history, community, and other related topics.

Back to the Question at Hand: Improving Our Ability to Communicate

At the same time, expecting anyone (no matter their lived experience, expertise, or knowledge) to educate either individuals or organizations purely out of the goodness of their heart is both rude and unreasonable. My landlord doesn’t let me live in my apartment out of the goodness of its warm, fuzzy, corporate heart, so I need to spend my time in a way that gets my rent paid — and I expect the same to be true of every human I encounter. (Kronda Adair has written several brilliant posts on this topic — start with this post.) In the event we all wind up living in a communist utopia, remind me to revisit this point.

That means paying multiple editors to look over my work who can bring the right context to it, right? Since I don’t have a lot of money, I generally can’t afford to work with more than one editor on a project. As it happens, since I write for the web, I often can’t afford to work with even one editor.

When I’m flying without a grammatical net, there are some options for improving my writing without spending a ton of money:

  • I use a ton of technology. There are tools to analyze common grammatical mistakes, such as the spell check tool built into most word processors. But there are also tools that do more specific editing tasks, such as the Hemingway app, which helps writers to follow Hemingway’s writing advice (limited adjectives and adverbs, short sentence structures and so on).
  • I got an education in writing and communications, and then kept learning. I have a couple of degrees in communication, which included loads of classes on writing. I also still read a ridiculous amount about writing. I kept learning after getting a degree, using self-education materials available from experts, ranging from writing hacks to full-fledged textbooks. A degree isn’t necessary in this field and an in-person class isn’t even required.
  • Lastly, I adore my style guide. I don’t (usually) sleep with the AP Stylebook, but I still keep both the digital and print copies handy. I also own a bunch of other style guides. I ask the publications I write for if they have their own style guides. I also have made my own style guides, both for individual publications I work on and more generally (i.e., I’ll go to bat with an editor to make sure ‘internet’ is not capitalized).

The resources for writing responsibly and ethically are few and far between. During my education, the closest I got to a class on how to write with some level of sensitivity was a graduate-level course on how to write about controversial topics — where ‘controversial’ was read as ‘political’ or ‘religious’ more than anything else. (Side note: That class was taught by Arthur Magida, author of How to Be a Perfect Stranger, which I have referred to as The Book that Keeps Me From Screwing Up Other People’s Weddings. I highly recommended it.)

That particular class was incredibly valuable, but I had to wait until I was working on a master’s degree to have an instructor start talking about how to start thinking about dealing with difficult topics, despite taking my first journalism class in middle school. How is there not a basic class in every journalism, public relations, and marketing program on how to write for diverse audiences? We teach basic interviewing techniques, like how to ask a question to high school journalism classes, but fail to teach those same students which questions to ask or who to ask questions of. I don’t know what your student paper looked like, but mine didn’t exactly reflect the demographics of our student body. It reflected the perspectives of the teachers leading the class and of the kids in accelerated English classes — despite having a big ESL program at our school, I can’t remember a single ESL student writing for the student paper. I’m not advocating for fully restructuring journalism (yet!) but we do need to make a point of teaching empathy in journalism.

We’re at the beginning of conversations about representation in the media. There are a few organizations now that try to track statistics on authors and writers, like the VIDA Count. Getting more diverse writers (and other media makers) into big publications is just a first step. Telling stories of underrepresented demographics is the next step — and I’m not talking about tokenism. Pro tip: it’s perfectly fine to have an article about a technical project led by a woman without every asking her about whether she thinks tech is a tough industry for women. As a matter of fact, skipping the focus on how different the story’s subject is means that you get to spend more time on how cool the actual project is.

Some individuals and organizations have started working on this problem, but many resources are fragmented. I have more than a dozen style guides and media guides just for covering religion. (I’ll get more into what’s out there in another post I’m already working on.)

We still have a long way to go to get to a truly diverse media scene, though. I keep thinking of our current media landscape as the beginning of a very long journey — we’re still outfitting ourselves for the trek and don’t really know what’s on the trail ahead. We won’t even know some of the work we need to do to get to that far off Wonderland until we get on the road. We know that we need to remodel or replace many of the systems in place to produce journalism and other media, but until that work is done, we won’t know many of the steps that come after.

Let’s Talk Ideals and Infrastructure for Writers

In my ideal world, I could just use pronouns that aren’t based on gender for writing and everything else. I recognize that I have to stick to the current system if I want readers to be able to understand everything I publish, but I certainly don’t like the existing system.

Until there’s a good opportunity for a linguistic revolution, I’m focused on making the existing system better. That means starting with the writers who make the articles, blog posts, and other things we read (along with the scripts for plenty of the audio and video content we see, too). Style guides are a good starting point for talking about how we cover things because we’re already used to looking up details we might get wrong.

In fact, some organizations have put out specialized style guides for how writers can cover their specific communities. These resources are all over the place, however, and sometimes contradictory. Creating a standard resource is the first step to making improvements in who writes what stories. Having discussions about diversity and inclusion before publishing anything will, at least, limit some of the more thoughtless headlines and references that we see constantly. As a personal goal, I’d like to see publishers avoid referring to an Olympic athlete as someone else’s wife.

I have thought of other formats this style guide could take. I kept coming back to the idea of doing the research and running an in-person workshop, geared towards newsrooms. But while we clearly need more educational materials about writing responsibly, style guides have more power than classes. I’ve taken more writing classes than I can count. I don’t remember where all the handouts and notes are from those classes, though I can point to the occasional writing hack and say that I picked it up from a particular instructor. You could have swapped out most of my writing teachers for other writing teachers and I would never have noticed.

But taking my AP Stylebook from me would turn me into a mess. And while I could manage if you took my Chicago Manual of Style or one of the other style guides I rely on, I would be pretty unhappy. These reference books have impacted my writing far more than anything or anyone else.

Making a Real Difference with The Responsible Communication Style Guide

I’ve spent the past couple of years casually talking about making a style guide that answers some of the questions I have. Audrey Eschright, the publisher ofthe Recompiler, heard me talking about the idea for The Responsible Communication Style Guide this spring. She said that she wanted something similar and would be willing to work on the project.

Working with Audrey is amazing — we’re on the same page about everything except whether there’s a hyphen in ‘ebook’ (I’m anti-hyphen, while Audrey is pro-hyphen, if you’re wondering). Perhaps the most important thing we agree on is how to construct The Responsible Communication Style Guide. Our particular manifesto for this project can be broken down into the following bullet points:

  • We’re hiring the right people to write each of these sections and we’re paying them. None of that crap about asking people to educate us for free here.
  • We’re creating a printed resource, as well as a website. Different people use different formats (and we’ve got some cool ideas for even more approaches once we’ve got the initial iteration ready).
  • We’re developing training around The Responsible Communication Style Guide, because people only use resources they have some familiarity with.
  • We agree that this sort of style guide isn’t just about writing clearly. It’s also about being able to communicate in a manner that doesn’t harm anyone: writers, editors, and publishers influence culture and attitudes so directly that we have an obligation to use that power responsibly.

Yes, we’re both absolutely scratching our own itch with The Responsible Communication Style Guide. But we’re also creating something that we know there’s a need for — and something with the potential to guide major conversations in technology. Yes, journalists working in this space need the guide. But there’s more room than that in the long run. Ultimately, everyone in technology is a writer: a programmer writes documentation, technical blog posts, and internal talks, even if they never publish a single word outside of an employer’s media. Designers, marketers, and even business analysts create reams of written material every day.

This guide gives people who don’t necessarily think of themselves as writers a starting point for thinking, talking, and, yes, writing, about users in an empathetic way. There’s a real potential for The Responsible Communication Style Guide to equip us for important conversations by providing an introduction to concepts of identity and a framework for writing about those concepts.

So here we are. There’s a big chunk of my heart and soul up on Kickstarter right now. I’m a bit terrified, especially of getting things wrong with the people who I want to contribute to The Responsible Communication Style Guide. I’m ridiculously hopeful about what bringing this project to life means for the books and blogs I’ll read in the future. I’m wound up waiting to see who will back this project. We’ve got just under a month to make this happen. Let’s go.

We Need Your Help

If you are as excited as I am, we are looking for help!

  • Please consider backing our project, even at a low level. If everyone just bought an ebook copy at the $15 level, we would need just over 1,300 backers — and there are far more than 1,300 people writing about these topics.
  • Please share our Kickstarter with everyone who you think might be interested. From our perspective, that means journalists, marketers, speakers, and other folks who write publicly. But once the Responsible Communication Style Guide is a reality, we expect people to use it in ways we never considered.
  • Please let us know if you think of any ways to make this material more accessible to your community. We have some ideas (I want a linter for writing!), some of which will be incorporated into this first iteration of the guide and some of which we’ll work on after the Kickstarter (including my hopes for a linter).

Thank you for reading this whole long post and thank you for your help.

A New Use for Hemingway: Ghostwriting

I’ve been finding Hemingway surprisingly useful when working on ghost-writing projects lately. It’s a useful sort of a writing hack to get some quick insights when you’re trying to mimic someone else’s writing style.

Of course, Hemingway is fundamentally intended to help writers sound more like the man himself. But it does that by highlighting certain characteristics of writing:

  • passive voice
  • adverbs
  • vocabulary

By putting in writing samples from a client who I need to mimic, I can see pretty quickly how they use words. I can do that sort of analysis by hand, but it’s tedious enough that I don’t actually do so except on really well paying projects.

If you’re trying to mimic the style of someone’s writing, I suggest looking at several examples of someone’s writing through Hemingway’s lens, not just one. Getting the style right on a ghost writing project is hard enough when you’ve got multiple samples — getting style right off of just one sample is impossible.

Putting in several samples can be time-consuming, though. I do wish Hemingway had an API so that I could integrate it with some of my other writing tools, as well as automate the process of putting writing samples into the app. But I don’t absolutely need an API to keep finding new ways to use Hemingway — it’s just something that would be nice to have.

HTML is the New Latin

html

Latin is a strange language. No one speaks it as their first language and few people speak it regularly outside of Vatican City. Yet many schools still offer Latin classes and most of us know a few words (even if we aren’t always aware that we do). We still use Latin roots for forming new words, even in English with its Germanic heritage. Kids studying for the SAT or GRE learn Latin roots to score well on what may be the most important tests of their lives.

We have a certain respect for the language that united scholars and politicians across Europe hundreds of years ago. Latin provided an underlying structure that allowed key ideas to pass communication barriers. Whether or not Latin is regularly spoken in the future, it will still have a lasting impact on the words we use for centuries to come.

The digital age requires a new connective infrastructure. Markup languages, including HTML, are that communication tool. Markup languages are systems of annotating documents in a way that’s both visually different from the text itself and recognizable by computer programs. Learning at least a few HTML tags is rapidly becoming a necessary step to sharing information across borders. HTML, by the way, stands for “HyperText Markup Language.”

The Words Themselves Aren’t So Important Today

As a writer, I hate myself for even suggesting that words themselves aren’t so important. But with translation tools constantly improving, my choice to use English words is far less important than it was even a few years ago. Even the specific words I use are exchangeable for something simpler: I can drop a blog post like this into Hemingway and see where I can change my diction.

I read web pages written in foreign languages every day. Google translates those pages for me automatically. I don’t need a human to translate their work into Latin or another shared language for me to get the gist of it.

But I do need those foreign texts in a format that Google can access. They need to be web pages, written in HTML, so that a machine can access and process the information they contain. Markup languages make our work accessible to the world — the same purpose Latin served centuries ago.

Of course, machine-based translation isn’t perfect. It’s improving, however, especially as the systems handling such translation get access to more text and can learn from experience. The algorithms used to process language are improving every day. In the long-term, it’s possible that we really could have real-time translations whispered into our ears as we talk. In the meanwhile, we can make our work easier to access, both by machines and by humans.

A Little Formatting Makes a World of Difference

Formatting is crucial. When we speak, we can convey our emotions through eye rolls, upbeat tones of voice, and other non-verbal communication. But with the written word, we’re limited to sharing information through words and formatting. Boldness, bullet points, and other visual cues have to do the heavy lifting.

This sort of formatting also conveys information to non-human readers. When a machine processes a document without any formatting, it can guess what the title and topic of the piece are based on comparison to other documents. But if the writer of a document puts a couple of H1 tags around that document’s title, a computer can tell the title of the piece immediately. Doing so also helps human readers focus on the title quickly, as an added benefit.

Unfortunately, formatting isn’t always a simple matter. There are many ways we can share text with the world — a shared Word doc, a WordPress blog post, a plain text comment, and many more. But each of these methods brings its own formatting woes. Our reliance on rich text is to blame. Different tools implement formatting in different ways, making it difficult to copy and paste between systems. These proprietary systems don’t talk to each other as well as they could. Don’t get me wrong. The situation has improved over the past few years: You can copy text from a Microsoft Word document into a WordPress blog post without your formatting going all wonky now (provided you’re using a recent version of WordPress). But there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

Writers Need to Learn Markup Languages

The need to make our work more accessible for both human and machine readers seems like a question of improving technology. Our tools are continuing to evolve. But, as a writer, choosing to learn HTML or another markup language can push your own work much further.

On the most basic level, offering an editor or a publisher a plain text file formatted with HTML can help your career. An editor can get your work published online far faster if you hand them a prepared file. You have a far better shot at being the editor’s favorite writer when you know HTML.

On a deeper level, however, the ability to correctly format your writing in HTML can increase its reach. Search engines have a harder time ranking an incorrectly formatted blog post or web page than one with correctly written HTML. You don’t have to dive too far down the rabbit hole: just being able to format your writing and add a little meta data is enough to make your work much more accessible. Adding in the right HTML is the modern day version of translating your work into Latin so that the folks in the next country over can actually find and understand your work in their library.

I’m not suggesting that you learn how to program. I may personally think that’s a good idea, but I’ve seen other writers get anxious at that sort of suggestion. Rather, writers need to be able to annotate our work to ensure our meanings are clear — we need to add formatting tags and a few other details. It’s possible to get by with using a tool that generates your HTML for you. I actually write in Markdown using a cloud-based word processor that can transform Markdown files into all sorts of other formats. But it’s worth your while to learn some HTML first, if only so you’ll notice if an automated system gets something wrong.

HTML is a Tool of the Cultural Elite

Through the seventeenth century, getting any attention at all required translating your work into Latin. It didn’t matter if you were a member of the Catholic Church or not. Latin was your only choice of languages for communicating with the cultural elite. Even Isaac Newton, who lived in the Protestant country of England, wrote his mathematical treatises in Latin.

Today, reaching the cultural elite means publishing your work online. Online doesn’t mean just tossing up an essay or an article on your blog, by the way. If you want to have any sort of reach, you need to be able to push your work on to a variety of platforms, like the Kindle. Just as writing in Latin meant that any European with a good education could read Newton’s work, marking up your own work with HTML makes spreading it easier. You can immediately push your work out to all the different platforms your readers might use. (The only way to use what Amazon refers to as ‘advanced formatting’ in a Kindle ebook, as it happens, is to format your book using HTML.)

There may always be print versions of particular work, but we’re fast reaching a point where publishers of all stripes push work online first and create a physical copy second. And since HTML, with a little help from CSS, can format text for printing, we should expect the online-first mindset to become even more common.

So Where Should Writers Start?

It’s not uncommon to meet writers who are only interested in perfecting their craft. Personally, I find that mindset to be problematic: If you want to lock yourself in a room all day to write, how can you guarantee that anyone will ever read what you’ve created? If you want to opt out of the world and focus on writing to the exclusion of all other things, though, you do have the option.

But if you’d rather ensure your work reaches an audience, there are a few easy starting points to help you learn a markup language.

  • Start by writing in a rich text editor, such as the one built into WordPress. Write as you would normally, but make a point of switching from rich text to HTML. In WordPress, you just need to click between tabs at the top of the text box where you’re composing your latest magnum opus. Once you see your HTML, you can make a point of checking your formatting against the HTML your editor generates. You’ll pick up simpler formatting, like bold or italic quickly.
  • Consider going through a tutorial or a class. There are hundreds of free tutorials online for HTML and related topics. I’d suggest searching for how to handle specific questions, like ‘how to format a block quote in HTML‘. You can also take more in-depth classes, like those offered by Codecademy.
  • Learn more about markup languages — but only if you really want to. I realize that I’m already bumping up against the limits of what the average writer cares about by writing 2,000 words about why you should care about HTML. If I went down the rabbit hole into topics like metadata, Markdown, and the wide variety of markup languages out in the world, I’d probably lose most of you who have read this far. But for the one or two of you who have an interest, there are all sorts of opportunities out there for writers who really understand markup languages.

You can also consider your tools. We don’t always get the option of choosing how we write. The muse may only strike when you’re looking at an entirely blank screen or even if you’ve just got a pad of paper and a pen. But if you understand your own workflow, you may be able to upgrade your tools so that you’re able to deal with HTML questions and the like with only minimal effort.

At the bare minimum, choose word processing programs capable of exporting HTML without screwing up your carefully planned formatting. Scrivener, for instance, has a much better export track record than Microsoft Word. There are any number of word processors and other tools that will help you write, as well as add HTML to your work in an efficient manner.

Right now, I’m using a tool called Beegit. It gives me a way to share projects with a team, as well as the ability to write with visible markup in my documents. However, Beegit is based on Markdown, rather than HTML, so it’s not necessarily a good switch if you’re still learning about markup languages.

Your Obligation to Experiment

The written word is becoming ever more important: We spend more time with text today than any of our ancestors ever did. But we still haven’t perfected a way of ensuring that a given document is accessible to every single person who wants to read it. Language and cultural barriers still slow down how quickly we can share new ideas, as does issues as simple as file formats.

But the more that we writers can tackle the question of accessibility on our own, the wider our own work will spread. If reaching readers is one of the reasons you bother to put words into a row, take the time to experiment with markup languages, just scholars in centuries past invested the time necessary to learn Latin.

Photo credit: iStylr

Our Tools Dictate the Way We Think

The tools we use for writing change what we have to say. While most of the time I write in front of a computer, I also spend a lot of time writing long hand.

I use a fountain pen and a legal pad — an echo, perhaps, of reading about an author who did just that when I was still in high school. I’ve had an obsession with fountain pens for longer than that. I remember my dad letting me use his pen when I was you — a massive pen that I could barely write with, let alone write in cursive.

But, obsessions aside, I’ve noticed some major differences between the words I write with a pen and those I write on a computer. The self-editing process is one of the most obvious changes: on a computer, it’s practical to keep going back to the previous line and making changes. I shape my sentences, add transitions, and even eliminate repeated words all through the process of writing.

Making changes when writing by hand is far more difficult, so I tend to just write. I tell myself that when I type up a particular project I can edit it then. It’s more of an ideal way to write — it’s easier to get into the flow of the process and press on.

I like to say that I don’t get writer’s block. Wanting to eat keeps me motivated and moving forward. The reality is, of course, more complicated: I can’t afford writer’s block, so I build approaches into my day that keep my brain rolling. I write on my legal pads first, getting myself in the flow of writing. I essentially prime the pump so there are already words coming out before I start working on the computer. I rarely handwrite anything for a client, but getting to work on something I enjoy first seems to help even more, so I don’t worry about my topic first thing.

Part of the reason I keep client work to the computer is that I’ve noticed some key differences between my style on paper and on screen. I’m more willing to describe my own experiences away from the screen — a part of me feels that paper is less judgmental. But even my sentence structure varies: when I write on a computer, my sad addiction to parentheticals and appositives becomes evident. On paper, I use them much less often. I prefer simple sentence structures, perhaps because they are easier to construct when you don’t have the option of self-editing. I do have a tendency towards colons when writing by hand.

Word choice is another place where my writing diverges, though perhaps not for the reasons you think. When I work on my computer, I have a piece of software called TextExpander turned on. There are certain words and phrases that I don’t want to appear in my writing, mostly because I overuse them. When I type those words, TextExpander ‘expands’ them into glaring reminders to avoid using those verboten word choices. Of course, there is no way to automatically delete words when writing by hand. I do sometimes notice that I’m spelling out a word that Text Expander will take me to task on. I’ve got an anti-authority streak a mile wide, so I generally take pleasure in writing those words all the way out

Science has demonstrated that we think differently with a pen in our hands than with our fingers on a keyboard. That’s why students with learning disabilities, like dyslexia, are often handed a laptop. One is not better than the other — they’re just different options. And for anyone doing creative work, having those options is useful. When you re trying to create and there’s a problem, having a way to entirely switch the way you think about your work — perhaps just by taking a few steps — is invaluable.

I see a tendency in many fields to teach only computer-based skills — usually because working through a computer is so much faster. But the underlying skills are valuable. Even in computer programming, being able to step back and write out some pseudo-code can be a useful skill. Sink some time into doing your work the old hard way. You may be surprised by the results.

Be Careful of Writing Routines

There was a period of time when I thought my notebooks had to be just so; I would only write in a specific type of notebook, with a particular pen. That routine just about did me in as a writer. Rather than offering me a way to be a better writer (no matter how cool I thought my notebooks were), those routines offered me an easy way to procrastinate. If I didn’t have my notebook with me, I couldn’t write.

If I found myself with a spare hour but without my notebook — well, I wouldn’t be using that hour for writing. You can be sure of that. That writing routine of mine actually was an excuse not to write. I know that I purposely forgot my notebook at times when I could have gotten some good writing in, effectively giving myself permission to slack off and do something else.

Breaking Routines

Today, I write on different computers, type out notes on my phone and scribble notes on any piece of paper left in my vicinity too long. I still prefer using a notebook for hand-written notes and writing, if only because I can’t lose pages as easily as I can lose random notes. That said, the type of notebook certainly doesn’t matter to me.

I didn’t set out to break my routine: I found myself in a position where I was traveling and could only write on my laptop for several months. My notebook suddenly wasn’t an option. So I started working on my computer instead and rapidly realized that my notebook had little affect on the quality of my writing. It just happened to be the place where I was writing.

The Right Kind of Writing Routines

There are some kinds of writing routines that do support us in writing on a regular basis and those routines are well worth cultivating. Simple habits, like writing on a daily basis can get us to the point where we’ve completed books or have successful blogs, just by having a routine of writing every day, no matter what. The hard part is recognizing these routines.

Find the routines that work for you: the ones that support your ability to write on a regular basis and improve your skills. Toss the fancy notebooks and special pens, though, along with anything that is an excuse masquerading as a routine.