Yahoo Style Guide gone?

[Nicole]

It seems that sometime in the last few days the Yahoo Style Guide disappeared from the Yahoo website?  I often have it open in a tab to reference and was very recently referencing it for a web writing guide I'm putting together for my organization. Today I went to the tab I had it open in, and the page was a 404 error.  I then searched for it on Yahoo and got more 404s when trying to follow related results.  Though I never followed the Twitter account, it comes up in Yahoo search results then a 404 is thrown when the Twitter link is followed.

If they've permanently pulled it, that's too bad. It was a very helpful resource.

--Nicole

[Kevin Rapley]

It annoys me when resources like this get pulled. Thankfully we have tools like the Web Archive Wayback Machine that allow us to see what used to be there. If this is something you refer to often, I would recommend downloading all the web pages and assets to your local machine and keeping it as a local resource.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130508211424/http://styleguide.yahoo.com/

--Nicole

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Warm regards,

Kevin Rapley / User Experience Designer
0772 345 7862

[John Mohr]

Very helpful indeed. Hopefully it is just being updated or moved.

--Nicole

[Suzanne Baran]

Nicole,

I used to work at Yahoo and I helped compile some of the items in the guide. You can buy it on amazon for 10 bucks. Good luck. It's probably just an error you can report. They're great at responding to user concerns.

Suzanne

Content Strategy Director

http://www.content-empress.com

Sent from my iPhone

[Rachel Caldwell]

Hi Nicole,

 

A very good alternative you might want to look up is the GOV.UK style guide.

 

Rachel

[Dani Indovino]

I'm not getting 404s, but a redirect to their market with a link to buy the book.

I took it to mean, they were monetizing only.

[Rachel McAlpine]

I know it's a contradiction in terms, but I love my hard copy of the Yahoo! Style guide. 

Rachel

[Melanie Seibert]

Me too! 

Recently a couple folks on Twitter mentioned that they prefer hard copy for reference books. I'm in that camp (even though I love e-books for my fun fiction reading). And the Yahoo! Style Guide is my favorite.

Melanie

[Nicole]

I know I can save/get a hard copy somehow, but one of its greatest values to me was as an easy web reference I could point content contributors to.

I guess it's like Google Reader - you don't recognize how much you used it until faced with the fact that it's leaving/gone.

Thanks for commiserating, everyone.

--Nicole

[Kevin Rapley]

I will post again, as it may have been overlooked. Use the wayback machine to view the style guide online: http://web.archive.org/web/20130508211424/http://styleguide.yahoo.com/

I would recommend saving all of its assets to local so you have all the CSS and JavaScript files to view it in all its glory. You could even host it somewhere so you can still point contributors to it.

[Paola Roccuzzo]

So, just to do analyse this business decision from a content perspective, am I the only one here thinking that Yahoo! lost an opportunity (think: revenue) by taking the guide entirely offline, only offering a print edition, and not monetising the digital one through a subscription-based model?

-- 

P.

[david hendler]

Kevin,

An excellent link. Thanks.

I woud recommend, however, using the Oct 14, 2012 archive - http://web.archive.org/web/20121014054923/http://styleguide.yahoo.com/

From my clicks, I found that later archives have built-in redirects to the shopping cart (instead of the content). The Oct 14 edition seems to have usable content throughout.

Cheers,

-David

[James Callan]

Maybe they're updating it and considering something like that. (Or maybe they figured it wasn't going to be profitable enough for the effort regardless, which is a pity — I prefer it for web work to Chicago or AP.)

[Paola Roccuzzo]

James, it's true if they have no intention of reprinting, otherwise digital fulfillment is way more profitable (without considering the opportunity for upgrades, upsells etc.).

[Sheila Walsh]

Rachel, Thanks for posting this link. I have been looking for good style guide resources, and really like the format of the gov.uk style guide. One of my favorite parts was the following guidance, which made me smile to see in a style guide:

Don’t use Americanisms. You ‘fill in’ a form, not ‘fill out’ a form.

cheers,

Sheila