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Martin Bosworth reports: <<I've discovered that the developers'
documentation is generally solid and easy to understand, but it's rife
with grammatical errors and inconsistent style usage...>>
Count yourself lucky that the biggest problems are simple ones. With
some of my ESL authors, I grapple daily with stuff that sometimes
borders on the incomprehensible, whatever other minor problems it may
have. Don't forget to compliment your authors on the things that
they're doing right.
<<The primary app developers do not speak English as a first language,
so they often miss contextual cues and best standards, such as using
"he/she" constantly as opposed to "they", or avoiding gender-neutral
language altogether. I've been pondering whether or not I should create
a style guide for the department to refer to, both to improve their
skills and free me up to concentrate on more creative projects.>>
A style guide is rarely useful for anyone other than an editor and some
professional writers. In my experience, just about nobody ever consults
such a guide or follows it well on those rare occasions when they do
consult it. Moreover, referring authors to a style guide rather than
working with them to understand and fix their problems undermines the
key to a successful author-editor relationship: the "relationship"
part.
I spend a lot of time answering questions posed by my authors, and it
pays off enormously well: they understand that I'm always willing to
drop what I'm doing and help them solve their problems, and over time,
they've come to rely on me and have become eager to work with me. This
removes many of the frictions in the author-editor relationship and
makes it a true collaborative endeavor. That also makes it a much more
efficient process.
Rather than creating a style guide, you may find it more productive to
schedule a weekly lunch meeting where you informally teach them a
specific point of grammar, while also using the opportunity to
socialize. It can be very effective to keep tabs on the kinds of
problems each individual has, and make time (10 minutes will usually do
it) to discuss specific problems (one at a time) with the authors and
help them figure out how to solve the problem. Concentrate on the
things that are costing both of you the most time, because
demonstrating a quick payback on this investment of time clearly
demonstrates your value to the author, while also repaying your time
investment.
<<Is it the right course of action to take, and if it is, what're some
good suggestions or resources I can use in its creation?>>
Style guides can be useful for those who use them. <g> That being the
case, you want to find out two things: what your authors want to see in
a style guide, and how they want to access the guide. If you design the
guide to follow their preferences, they'll be more likely to use it; if
you make it easily accessible, they're less likely to find a reason not
to use it. (You could consider this exercise one of finding an answer
to the following overall question: What could I do to encourage you to
use our style guide?)
For example, I created a style guide for a former employer in
consultation with a half dozen authors, and used their recommendations
to ensure that the content, style, and format were appropriate for
their needs. I then added a hyperlink to the intranet version of the
guide directly at the top of our main Word templates, so a single click
took them right to the guide--thereby eliminating the "I couldn't
remember where it was on the intranet" and "it takes too long to scroll
through my bookmarks" excuses.
The guide still didn't get used all that often, but that's a fact of
life with nonprofessional (and some professional) authors.
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