RE: Creating a Style Guide, The Sequel

Subject: RE: Creating a Style Guide, The Sequel
From: "Jonathan West" <jwest -at- mvps -dot- org>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:19:29 +0100



>
> What suggestions or ideas do you have for creating a good style guide
> for users and managers to refer to?
>

If your users are mainly using Word I'd suggest the following

1. Create some templates for the most common document types. Make sure you
have a reasonable set of styles defined in the template.

2. Make sure that the templates have some nice easy-to-use toolbar buttons.
See here for suggestions "Creating Custom Toolbars for Templates"
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=262

3. Write the style guide in the context of explaining how to use the
templates.


If the users' jobs are not primarily to do with making clean consistent
documentation, then they won't bother with it, no matter how nice a style
guide you write, unless the template make it easier to do things right than
to do them wrong.

Regards
Jonathan West


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Try WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word today! Smooth migration of legacy
RoboHelp content into your new Help systems. EContent Magazine Decision-
maker review (October 2005) is here: http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

Doc-To-Help 2005 converts RoboHelp files with one click. Author with Word or any HTML editor. Visit our site to see a conversion demo movie and learn more. http://www.componentone.com/TECHWRL/DocToHelp2005

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.



Follow-Ups:

References:
Creating a Style Guide, The Sequel: From: Martin Bosworth

Previous by Author: RE: "^p" equivalent in Notepad?
Next by Author: RE: WORD '03 --Table in my document--self wrapping? Not sure what is going on...
Previous by Thread: Re: Creating a Style Guide, The Sequel
Next by Thread: Re: Creating a Style Guide, The Sequel


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads