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> What's the one reference book (not including the dictionary or
> thesaurus) that you would never give up? Why that one?
No question: Brusaw, Charles T., Gerald J. Alred, and Walter E. Oliu.
Handbook of Technical Writers, Fifth Ed. St. Martin's Press, 1997.
I own several reference books (Chicago Manual of Style; The Little, Brown
Handbook; the MLA Handbook; (Sun) Style Guide for the Computer Industry;
Writing for the Computer Industry; The Elements of Technical Writing;
Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace; Standards for Online Communication,
etc.); however the best, in my experience, is Brusaw's.
It's crisp, concise, cross-referenced, and in alpha order. It's full of all
kinds of useful hints from the mechanics of writing (design and layout,
documenting sources, research, how to write an abstract, executive summary,
proposal) to style and word usage (nominalizations, which vs. that, etc.)
It's the one book I continue to go back to, and several people in both my
old job and my new one have purchased their own copy.
