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Elizabeth Estep wonders <<...whether it's appropriate for a departmental
editor to attempt to enforce a "departmental voice" in edits.>>
Certainly. The trick is to determine just what level of consistency you
require, not whether consistency itself is important. You also need to
define which aspects of style require consistency, and which ones don't; if
you base these criteria on reader needs rather than writer preferences,
you've got a much more sound basis for making recommendations that are
actually meaningful and that everyone can agree with. You've provided no
examples of what types of style differences you're asking us to comment
upon, so it's not possible to do more than express a few general principles
in response:
<<Each writer creates manuals and help files for individual modules of a
primarily accounting application (each module has one writer, each writer
has many modules). In many cases, but not all, the modules are aimed at the
same basic audience... A few modules are aimed at other audiences such as
executives or the sales force... Assuming that two modules are writing to
the same general audience (accounting clerks and accountants), is it
appropriate for a departmental
editor to make edits to keep two separate manuals (say one for an Accounts
Receivable module and one for an Accounts Payable module) consistent in tone
and type of language? >>
I think you're editor has got the right idea: all manuals for a specific
audience should speak with a single voice, and if you're defining a manual
as a collection of modules, then the modules (and their authors) must be
consistent. Just think how confusing it would be if one author writes "Click
the X button", another writes "Select the X button", and another writes "the
button must be clicked". What if one writer provides examples based on
metaphor, another uses only highly concrete language--and another writer
provides no examples whatsoever? What if one style proves particularly
effective, another proves far less so, and another proves impossible for
readers to read and understand? The end result will be a manual or set of
manuals that look like they were written by someone with multiple
personality disorder. This is less evident if these alternative styles are
consistent within a manual (all modules for a given product), but you're
still doing a disservice to readers if they have to learn to deal with a
wholly new style in each manual. These are obviously drastic examples to
dramatize my point, but at some point, stylistic creativity for its own sake
becomes an exercise in reader abuse. One of the better definitions I've seen
(no idea who said it, but it might have been Strunk or White) is that
outside creative writing, if the reader notices your style, you've failed as
a writer.
<<Only the types of style as defined in the departmental style guide (i.e.
punctuation, limited passive voice, bulleted lists formats) should be
enforced. Anything else is "individual writing style" and should be allowed
because otherwise a) the writer is stripped of creativity, and b) there's a
negative impact on the writer-editor relationship.>>
The style guide provides a _minimum_ starting point. If your authors want
creativity, tell them to write novels in their spare time--_that_ is
industry standard practice. <g> Creativity in technical communication
(except marketing, obviously) involves understanding how something works and
how to explain that working to the reader, not seeing whether you can write
like James Joyce. The writer-editor relationship shouldn't suffer if the
writer sees the editor as helping to ensure compliance with a set of style
guidelines that everyone's agreed upon; it suffers when it becomes a "my
style is better than yours and I get the final word because I'm the damned
editor" situation. If you want to promote a good relationship, you need to
sit down together and agree upon what styles to enforce and what ones not to
enforce. But:
<<2 - Manuals should be consistent in terminology, phrasing, and
organization, except where differences are required based on the audience.
The editor should edit manuals aimed at the same audience to sound as much
as possible as if they were written by the same person.>>
Consistency based on audience is pretty much the industry-standard practice.
Anyone who's ever written for a glossy magazine or other professional
periodical will tell you (usually with a sigh of resignation or a few choice
curses) that their work is heavily reworked to conform with that
publication's voice. Compare how articles are written for Scientific
American and Discover, for example, and you'll see how voices and styles are
highly consistent from issue to issue, yet differ greatly between the two
magazines because they have quite different audiences. If you look closely
at the two magazines, you'll also get a clear idea of the kinds of stylistic
variation their editors permit or encourage.
<<One writer (and I'm not saying who) supports her arguments by pointing to
an "industry standard practice" but without supporting evidence beyond her
own experience.>>
If you can't provide evidence, it's opinion, not fact--and generally
ill-informed opinion at that. Ask her to provide concrete examples. If she
can provide concrete examples, then she's got a point, and you probably need
to address it.
<<if anyone can define "industry standard" it's going to be this email
list>>
Or Microsoft. Not! <g> There ain't no such thing as industry standard. Every
company does it differently, as a quick glance through a shelf full of
software documentation will show you. You want evidence? There's your
evidence! You want more concrete advice? Give us examples of the original
text and the editor's edits! You want style? You just got some! <vbg>
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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