atw: Re: Style guide: keep it short
- From: Janice Gelb <Janice.Gelb@xxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:50:09 +1000
Stuart Burnfield wrote:
Hi Janice. As far as large companies are concerned, I agree with you.
As a contract writer at IBM, I found the style guide, word usage
database and other resources a great help and a pleasure to use. I'm
sure it would be the same working for Sun.
I'm assuming that few of us on this list need to develop a style
guide for a large company. We're talking about companies large enough
to need one, but small enough not to have one already--possibly
dozens/hundreds of contributors, but only a handful of writers and
editors.
[snip]
In a smallish organisation, it's so hard to get anyone to follow the
most basic elements of a template or style guide. Given that, I
believe that 50 guidelines (of which ten or so are actually followed)
are better than 500 guidelines (of which ten or so are actually
followed).
I don't disagree. I was merely pointing out that you
need a combination of a reference style guide and your
house style. I don't think you could do a sole style
guide without backup material of only 50 guidelines.
-- Janice
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Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
janice.gelb@xxxxxxx | this message is the return address
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