Re: writing a corporate style guide from scratch

[Donald Le Vie <dlevie -at- VLINE -dot- NET>]

I responded to Ann off line (oh no...is it offline or off-line??) with my
recommendations. I think the bottom line with style guides is the same with
any other document....who's your audience?  If you're putting together a
style guide for your team of writers and editors ONLY, then I think Art's
suggestion is a great one.

Having had participated in the "growth opportunity" otherwise known as style
guide development (several times), I can say that each one contained
different kinds of information, to varying levels and degrees, and each with
a different page count. Each one was developed in response to the particular
audience requirements.

My last effort (which I wrote about in the January 1997 issue of InterCOM),
was probably the most comprehensive style guide I ever worked on, because
SMEs (microprocessor design and application engineers) were the source of
most of our documentation. They had little time or inclination to learn
where the official, standard documentation templates resided or how to
download them, and knew just enough FrameMaker to be extremely dangerous to
the integrity of any documents under development. They wanted shortcuts for
FrameMaker; they wanted to see a document in each of the 8 different
templates fully annotated with each different paragraph tag labeled; they
wanted to have templates for giving internal and external presentations. So,
we included it all because that's what our audience needed, which was what
we needed to make the style guide useful and something that most people
would comply with, rather than something to be used as a door stop...

Donn Le Vie
Integrated Concepts

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Campbell, Art [SMTP:artc -at- NORTHCHURCH -dot- NET]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 1999 12:26 PM
> To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject:      Re: writing a corporate style guide from scratch
>
> I can't second Lisa's recommendation enough. Don't build what you can buy.
> IMHO, the local style guide should be less than four pages -- an 11x17
> sheet
> folded once. It's very hard to come up with that many "local" exceptions
> to
> well-established guides.
>
> Signed... a veteran of several well-hated style guide committees,
> Art
>
> Art Campbell
> Technical Publications
> Northchurch Communications
> Five Corporate Drive
> Andover, MA 01810
> 978 691-6344
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Higgins, Lisa [mailto:LHiggins -at- CARRIERACCESS -dot- COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 1999 1:16 PM
> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject: Re: writing a corporate style guide from scratch
>
>
> Don't reinvent the wheel. Start out with an established style guide, then
> address deviations, additions, and company-specific issues in a separate
> document.
>
> I'd recommend Chicago personally, but you could use just about anything
> you
> want, really. Sun, Wired, and Microsoft all have non-prescription,
> over-the-counter style guides, for example.
>
>
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>


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