While there have been huge leaps in the technology used to create and publish user documentation, it’s been quite a while since there were any serious changes to the writing style in technical communication. Here is a rough timeline for technical communications standards, according to xml.org: 1961 Quick Reader Comprehension (QRC) 1963 Hughes STOP – (Sequential Thematic… Read more »
Category: style guides
Voltaire, typos, and the jitters – writing the IBM Style Guide
This guest post is from Peter Hayward of IBM (UK): Voltaire said that “the art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” Technical editing is a bit like practising medicine. It has a focus on both prevention and cure, except we don’t have nature on our side. With editing, nature… Read more »
Microsoft Style Guide for Windows 2007?
We received this email yesterday: Microsoft Style Guide for Windows 2007Do you know whether such a thing exists or whether you know of anything else that might help? I am updating the help for our new product and it uses a Windows 2007 ribbon style GUI but I don’t know what all the elements are… Read more »
Web 2.0 style guides
We recieved an email asking: “I have just started at this software company, and one of my tasks is to work on the writing style guide. I have been looking around on the Internet for a style guide that covers writing style for web applications (or interfaces), and am wondering if you could point me… Read more »