RE:Communication Handbook vs Style Guide (with corrections)

[David Handy <david -dot- handy -at- automsoft -dot- com>]

Tom,
It sounds like your and your colleagues may have got some lines crossed when
discussing this. I could be wrong; anyway, that stuff happens sometimes...
At any rate, you'd probably agree that there's typically no advantage to
having two style guides in a workplace. If there's any overlap or
disagreement between them, then the risk of people writing inconsistent
documents in your company is increased, not decreased -- which surely
defeats the purpose of having a style guide in the first place. 

It may be that the clerk (or whomever) has a lot emotionally invested in the
current comms guide, but so be it. (Who knows, they may have slaved over it
for years.) If the clerk's style guide is a good one, then let him/her deal
with their issues, if any, and say "thanks for the cool style guide"...

If the Society of Petroleum Engineers' style guide you found has good
chapters on, say, industry-specific jargon not covered in your current
guide, then you could recommend it to the clerk as a source for updating the
comms guide. But from where I'm standing, I don't think I'd expend much
energy competing with a colleague on this one. 

As to whether there's a diff between a "style guide and a communcations
handbook" per se, I couldn't say without seeing inside the docs in question.
I wouldn't focus on the titles. 

HTH,

david
automsoft


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