The style guide I'd like to write would be hundreds of pages long. The style guide I expect other people to *use* had better not be longer than about six A4 pages (if printed out; actually it would probably be one long HTML page with links).
The body of the style guide should consist of a series of blunt commandments, with no justification but lots of examples and one or two important exceptions.
"Numbers:- Spell out one to nineteen; use numerals for 20, 21 and so on. Exceptions: blah blah"
Append a short list of references: - general dictionary (perhaps also a technical dictionary) - usage manual - Read Me First, MS Manual of Style, DQTI, etc.Accompany it with a template and a very short sample document. There might be a few of these--e.g. help file, web page, user manual. If the template is well designed and the styles have sensible names, it should be mostly self-explanatory.
But how could you possibly distill a lifetime's wisdom and experience in under a thousand pages? 1. Don't try. If you can think of fifty short, worthwhile, guidelines and you can get people to consistently follow ten of them, you're doing well. 2. The fine folks at Sun Technical Publications, Macquarie, the AGPS, and so on, already wrote the thousand pages and more, and they did a good job. Stand on their broad shoulders, not their toes.
3. Leave out your pet peeves--every one of them. Nobody cares. ************************************************** To view the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field (without quotes). To manage your subscription (e.g., set and unset DIGEST and VACATION modes) go to www.freelists.org/list/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************
