Comments on: Writing Style Guides and Your Parenting Style

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:19:53 +0000

Thanks to everyone who participated in this thread. Sorry for my slow responses. I always read your comments shortly after you post them. This time it just took me a few days to get in the commenting mood.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:18:03 +0000

Richard, I know what you mean by the involved word geek arguments. I remember spending 45 minutes discussing whether a certain comma usage was allowed. Another time we spent days discussing whether Apple’s allowance of “then” as a coordinating conjunction (e.g., Click the File menu in the upper-right corner, then click Print) was grammatically correct. Still not sure about that one. Having helped put together a team style guide for 12 writers once, in my current job we decided to just adopt an existing one.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:15:54 +0000

It’s interesting that transparency of content usually means absence of style. Though the way style is used by most groups, it means word usage and formatting rather than flair, flow, or sentence rhythm.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:12:09 +0000

PB, thanks for your well-written comment. I guess my situation is considerably different from yours. In my organization, each writer is segmented into different portfolios (mini-departments). Rarely do we collaborate on documents. Our customers don’t often overlap, so if there is inconsistency, it isn’t really noticeable. The situation you described seems very different, and I can see how more consistency might be necessary.

Also, thanks for pointing out your observation in the last paragraph — that sometimes strict adherence to a granular style guide is adapting to the situation.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:06:33 +0000

Mike, good points. Thanks for participating in this discussion. I perform some editor-like roles as part of my job, and I have to say that rarely do people get what an editor’s true role is. An editor’s role isn’t to make sure that people are hyphenating e-mail or always including “message” after the word “e-mail.” Grammar and style are some of the least important aspects of communication (though of course I edit for this too). An editor’s real role is to ensure rightness, accuracy, and relevance of content. When I review communications, I tend to ask questions such as, Does this make sense? Who will be reading this? What kinds of questions will they have? Are these steps accurate? (I usually walk through them myself.) What’s the larger message we’re trying to send here? Is this logical?

These questions about content are more for communications rather than technical documentation, but my experience with editors is that they focus too much on grammar and style and in so doing miss the larger point of the communication. But yes, in so far as you’re documents will translated, some agreement about terms is definitely worthwhile.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:59:44 +0000

Joe, thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. And sorry for my slow reply to this thread. I mostly agree with you here — I’m not advocating that all style guides and standards be thrown out the window in favor of creativity, innovation, and freedom. I’m saying that enforcing a rigid style guide isn’t a necessary thing to do. We generally follow Microsoft and Chicago, as well as standard grammar. And we do generally hyphenate e-mail as well because another style guide in our org dictates it, but I think that exacting conformity to a granular-level style guide produces boxed in thinking, and eventually people do stop thinking for themselves. I would gladly accept variation in how people write “email” if it led to greater innovation and more responsible practices among a team.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:54:12 +0000

Honey, if you start writing 2 spaces after periods, I will start slurping freely at the table.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:52:41 +0000

Scott, you expressed my point probably better than I did. I’m really writing against these people that blow their top when they see one writer using “drop-down” and another using “dropdown.” In my experience, no user has ever written in to complain about trifles such as these.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:51:09 +0000

Matt, thanks for your comment. I agree that CSS does lend itself to interesting possibilities for variations within a team style. Good point. I hadn’t thought of it from that angle.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:43:28 +0000

Having worked with a team of writers, all working on different projects, and no Managing editor in charge of consistency, I found that as long as I was consistent throughout a single document, everything was ok with our customers. But WE sure enjoyed have long and involved word geek arguments!