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RE: Question about book not keeping to Writing dept. style guide
Subject:RE: Question about book not keeping to Writing dept. style guide From:"Sarah Bouchier" <Sarah -dot- Bouchier -at- exony -dot- com> To:"Caroline Tabach" <caroline -dot- tabach -at- gmail -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:07:55 -0000
>The question is, should I ask one of the writers here to go through
>the book and make the appropriate changes so it conforms to our style
>guide.
Someone certainly should, though you may choose to alter only the most
obtrusive things (such as the table style and the quotation marks).
If it's important (for user familiarity, corporate branding, whatever
reason) to have a style in the first place, then it's still important
even when someone's mistake has left you with an awful lot of work to
implement. Unfortunately!
The next question is, however, +why+ your style guide wasn't used. Who
was involved in the outsourcing? Were the outsourcers asked to use the
style guide, and was it made available to them?
+Someone+ was responsible for this sudden load of extra work you have,
and it's definitely worth making sure they know that not conforming to
the style guide is +not+ a minor issue that's quickly fixed.
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