According to Mashable, Yahoo now has its own style guide. It differs from the AP style guide, one cited example is email where the official AP still says e-mail.

It’s not just going to be a style guide, though. There will also be tips for writing on the web and how to get traffic to see your site.

So how many style guides do we need? It’s difficult to keep up with the English language as it is, so let’s throw more options into the mix. Does it make you wonder what it takes to set yourself up as an expert? Do you need anything official to create an official guide? Who decides where the language is going, if not the people who use it?

And if it’s the people who use it, aren’t we in deep, deep trouble?

English can’t be an easy language if so many of the native speakers can’t get the written word right. (The spoken words have issues, too, but perhaps not as many due to the informality of most speech.) Is it because English keeps evolving? Because it keeps borrowing words from every other language and making up more as needed? Is the versatility that makes English good for finding a proper word also bad for learning it?

Will there be an answer if the masses believe that if someone can make out a meaning, it’s good enough? When I’m writing, I like second opinions to make certain my intent is coming through. Often it doesn’t come through exactly like I envisioned it. So I dig through the issues until I fix it.

Not that it isn’t a great opportunity for humor where there’s more than one meaning, but a writer isn’t able to turn to the reader with that condemning look and say, “You know what I mean.”

That’s one reason for a style guide – to give a set way to put things on paper. To know where to punctuate and why, along with a ton of other stuff non-writers probably don’t give much thought to.

Which is why we can bandy their words about when they put them out there. Oh, such great games to play. Almost makes me want to go start a pun war.