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2) A hearty "Hear, hear!" to those who recommended the Sun style guide.
It's the one-volume 'desert island survival guide' for tech writers.
3) I believe a corporate style guide should be as short as possible. By
that I mean a 5-page style guide is better than a 100-page style guide.
It should complement existing references, not supersede them. In other
words:
- Give writers access to a single official reference such as the Sun
style guide or MMoS. Tell them to use it in all instances except where
the advice is superseded in your local style guide.
- Nominate a dictionary to be used for all words except those specified
in your local 'special terms' list.
- Define fonts and page layouts in templates.
4) Bear in mind that the benefits of a style guide come overwhelmingly
from consistency, not from the merits of the rules themselves. For all I
know Rahul's preferred way of punctuating lists may be 2% better than
Russel's and 2% worse than Ricky's, but you could pick any one and
you'll be 98% better off just because you're all doing it the same way.
This isn't to say that the rules themselves are unimportant, but it
should help you decide how much time it's worth putting into
researching, rewriting and arguing about local rules. (Hint: not much.)
Stuart
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