Re: Getting input into the style guide

[Mark Levinson <MarkL -at- gilian -dot- com>]

Bruce says don't generate a paper trail.  I feel the opposite way.
Maybe different experiences have been branded on our psyches.

I imagine a scenario in which the people who (in Andrew's words)
"find such stuff phenomenally petty"-- meaning of course that it
is petty of you to dispute their decision, not petty of them to
stick unthinkingly to it-- will one day be told by someone
they respect that they need help with their book design, 
and rather than consulting the lowly techwriter, they will
go to a profe$$ional de$igner and they will come back and say
to you, "Wow, we learned in one hour more than we ever knew there
was to know about design, and doubtless more than you would ever
understand if we told you.  You know those little lines on the
end of letters?  They're called serifs.  Some fonts have them
and some fonts don't.  But you're just a technical writer, we'll
make it easy for you, the important thing is we bought this 
new font called Times."    

At this point, it is nice if you can produce your old memo that
said "Ariel may be fine for many purposes, but traditionally
the body-text font for any book-length work has serifs."

(I say this as someone who values his peace of mind more than
his job.)

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