Six Questions for Blogger, cont.

The subject of this series is the amateurish and ineffective explanations and directions on Google's Blogger, the site that hosts this blog. Earlier posts in this series appear below.

Question #5: Are your writers and editors familiar with in-house stylebooks for published—posted or printed—texts?

Even junior editors are familiar with stylebooks, those guides to grammar, spelling, punctuation, voice, footnotes, numeration, treatment of proper names, and hundreds of other aspects of written communication. The best known and most widely used general stylebooks are The Chicago Manual of Style and The AP Stylebook (AP = Associated Press). But there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stylebooks available, many addressing special interests like articles for scientific journals or appropriate terms related to specific ethnic identities.

In addition, it's very common for professional publications and websites to create in-house stylebooks that codify unique usage choices and patterns.

Stylebooks contribute to consistency, one requirement of clarity in written communication. They also help writers and editors employ norms of language and presentation, thereby minimizing the "huh?" factor so deadly to readers and users.

Stylebooks are not meant to enforce either rigid formality or dull conformity in text; on the contrary, by liberating the written word from confounding errors and muddled inconsistency, they enhance creativity and reader comprehension.

The evidence from official site text on Blogger.com suggests that there's no physical stylebook or subscription to an online style resource in that wing of the Googleplex. (Google bought Blogger.com in 2003.) The fact is—and it's a sad fact for Blogger users like me eager to learn more, but not immersed in tech culture—Blogger doesn't appear to be aware of its own deficiency. I'm guessing that this is because management there emphasizes functional development to the exclusion of clear and useful communications to users about how to exploit the site's functionality. Or maybe, as I've heard from insiders, Blogger is a relatively low priority at Google. In this environment, perhaps, effective communication at Blogger has gone the way of arts in the schools.