Style Guide Help (thanks-and pretty long)

[chasity mcwilliams <chas -at- fcs -dot- uga -dot- edu>]

I want to say thank  you to all of the people who responded 
to my request for help.  I was asked by a several people to 
post the results of my query back to the  list.  Before I 
do that, I would like to explain my situation a little bit 
more.  As I said in my previous post, I have never been 
trained as a technical writer.  I am a complete newbie and 
I don't consider myself to be an actual technical writer 
(meaning I've never held that title and it would not 
occur to me to bill myself as one). I have been placed in a 
situation where I am creating many help guides and manuals 
as well as handouts or "cheat sheets".  Most of these 
things are software related.  Others are processes for 
accomplishing certain tasks with different pieces of 
equipment.  The reason that I rely so heavily on this list 
is there are no writers of any kind in this particular 
college (Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of 
Georgia).  I appreciate having somewhere to go that will 
allow me to do this part of my job well.  This entire spiel 
is to warn everyone out there that I will probably post 
many newbie or just plain dumb questions.  I want to 
apologize for that in advance.  I take instruction fairly 
well so just tell me if I need to take the question 
somewhere else and I will with no hard feelings.  That 
said, thank you again to everyone who responded to my 
request for help.  On to the results.

Creating a Style Guide
1. Find out as much as you can about why the guide needs to 
be created.  That means questioning, reading through 
previous documentation, and researching any standards that 
are already in place.

2. Define a set of references.   This step seemed to be the 
most important step to many of you.  The top  suggestions 
for  references were. 
	a.Any Standards that are currently in Place.
	b. Read Me First: A Style Guide for the Computer 
	   Industry (Sun Tech Communications)
	c. Microsoft Manual of Stule  (Microsoft)
	d. Handbook of Technical Writing by Brusaw, Alred
Most of the recommendations were that I get both the 
Microsoft and Read Me First as compliments to each other.

3. Define the types of documents you will be creating.  In 
my case it will (mainly) be user help guides to the 
specialized and commonly used software on our Lab 
Computers.  This step includes defining whether or not the 
documents are going to be for print or web or both.


4. Work with Other writers to come to a consensus of what 
needs to be included and what can be left out.  This is 
only if you are in a department with other writers or will 
be working with a team.  This one did not apply in my 
case, but I do plan to run the first few drafts past the 
technicians just in case they can add anything I forgot.

5. Define Document formatting. Formatting includes: page 
sizes, margins, tabs, numbering, bullets, and fonts 
(stlyes, types, and sizes).

6. Define Guidelines for screen captures and tables which 
includes:
	a. How the screen captures will be taken.
	b. Image resolution and size
	c. Caption formatting and placement
	d. Borders
7. Define wording.  Particularly:
	a. Headings (imperative, declarative or gerunds?)
	b. Dealing with the passive voice and conditional 
	   tense
	c. Define wording for commonly used terms, 
           conditions, and situations.
8. Set standards for  capitalization, punctuation, and 
spelling.

If I left anything out, just let me know.  Thanks again for 
all of the help. You will hear from me again.  That's the 
only thing I am absolutely certain about.

Chas 




----------------------
"You're not dying, you just can't think of anything
 good to do."
-Ferris B.

chasity mcwilliams
chas -at- fcs -dot- uga -dot- edu