Microsoft has released the latest edition of its writing style guidelines as a website: “Welcome to the Microsoft Writing Style Guide, your guide to writing style and terminology for all communication—whether an app, a website, or a white paper. If you write about computer technology, this guide is for you. Today, lots of people are… Read more »
Tag: Style guide
Don’t say “simply”
At this month’s WriteTheDocs London meetup, Jim Fisher of Pusher presented a talk called “Don’t say Simply“. He talked about words, such as “simply”, that can seem innocuous when written in user documentation, but which show a lack of sympathy when read. He showed how popular “simply” is with developer documentation writers, by showing the number… Read more »
Writing for User Interfaces Style Guide
The Government Digital Service has published an interesting guide on writing copy for User Interfaces and transactional interfaces: Writing for user interfaces It provides some good advice, and it’s consistent with the advice provided by other organisations, such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.
Is it time for a new writing style in technical communication?
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 »
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 »