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I think a style guide is a very good idea. The problem is that a lot of
government standards, I've noticed, are often in conflict with accepted usage
(they seem to use an older standard). So would it be possible for us to adopt a
unified standard EXCLUDING government tech writers, or would we have to do
things that I had to do when I was working for a government contractor (i.e.,
data base = noun, database = adjective)? I'm thinking that the incredible
diversity in our field (not all of us are writing software manuals!)
may preclude unified standards for anything but some of the most basic and
obvious problems.
Nora Merhar
merhar -at- switch -dot- rockwell -dot- com
