Re: PREFERENCE: Style

["John Posada (work account)" <posada -at- FAXSAV -dot- COM>]

John...I'd like to offer an opinion based solely on your message.  I
don't mean you any insult and I'm not flaming you.

However, it appears that you don't need to develop an inhouse style
guide.  Just buy a bunch of copies of CMS and pass that out as the
guide.

What I'm getting a in a round-about way is that CMS and all of its
brothers are only guides.  You ARE allowed to do things differently, you
ARE allowed to use your imagination, and not everything that CMS states
is law.  Yet I see too many instances where our audience may have
benefited from a particular form of unorthodox presentation, but because
it isn't in the CMS (or APA, you take your pick), we don't take
advantage of our experience to create truly useful material.

I only bring this up for two reasons.

1) I would assume that you have a certain degree of experience.

Why not rely on that when developing your styles.  Yes, I have CMS, I
also have style guides developed by industry specific organizations and
companies (i.e., A Style Guide for the Computer Industry published by
Sun Technical Publications and three or four others).  I may leaf
through the guides to come up with ideas, but after I evaluate the idea,
I pattern my styles based on what works for MY content, my audience, and
me-not someone else who may live in Illinois.

2) The list was getting boring and I figured we needed another topic to
stir up some "input" (grin).

Common, guys, let's show a little imagination and initiative.  By the
time we've reached the qualification level when we are developing our
company's style guides, we should have seen enough high-quality and low
quality stuff to make our own decisions on what works and what doesn't.

John...PLEASE don't take this as a personal criticism.  It's only
typical with what I see going on alot in this business and I think we
are missing out on some innovative creativity.

John Posada


John L Patterson wrote:
>
> We are developing an in-house style guide for regulatory manuals.  From
> your experience, please help us resolve the following issues:
>
> (1) Is it best to use dot leaders in the table of contents?  The Chicago
> Manual of Style says don't use them.
>
> (2) What information is most useful in headers?  Is it useful to put the
> title of a manual in the header?
>
> (3) If one uses both chapter and section titles in the header, what should
> be their position on alternate pages?
>
> (4) On what pages should headers be omitted?  The Chicago Manual of
> Style says don't put them on first pages of a chapter or major section, or
> on pages where a table or figure takes up the whole page.
>
> (5) What information is most useful in footers?
>
> John Patterson
> a342jpatters -at- attmail -dot- com
>
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--
John Posada, Technical Writer (and proud of the title)
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   If it's about technical communication--post it! If not, don't!
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