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Subject:Re: About that whacky MS MoS for TPs From:kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 21 Jun 2001 08:20:26 -0700
>Sean wrote: ...it's not really such a big deal for me. It's not worth a
battle.
>and also wrote: But, I am curious to know how these maroons came up with
such garbage.
__________________________
Based on those two conflicting statements, it sounds like it IS a big deal
to you. But it also sounds like you're outvoted. Style guides are by their
nature ARBITRARY, and SOMEBODY has to make the decisions. If you're not in
a position to make (or at least influence) the decision, you're better off
to just deal with it.
One advantage of using the MS guide (or ANY guide) exclusively is that
then there is only ONE place to look for rules. I worked in a shop that
used the MS guide and their own guide, and you had to look everything up
in BOTH guides, which was a pain in the butt. The rule there seemed to be
"we follow the MS guide, except for in certain instances." And the other
guide contained 40+ pages of "certain instances." No fun.
I'm a big advocate of setting some simple rules and following them,
whether everybody loves them or not (this is an important condition;
you'll never please EVERYBODY with your style decisions). Then you have a
decent chance at some consistency between writers and documents.
As far as where that "garbage" came from, remember, that's just the style
guide used for that company to describe their products. And many of their
products have those annoying names with CreaTive CapiTaliZation and/or
CombinedPseudoWords.
It was NOT written to be the Style Guide of All Civilization (although
it's rapidly becoming exactly that, I'll admit). Its truest application is
simply as a guide for writers who are documenting MS's large catalog of
products.
Because so many of us use their products (and/or work with products
designed to play nicely with their products), somebody had the bright idea
that people outside of MS might also find the book useful. So far I've
found it to be the most useful guide I've seen for general use with
documenting Windows-based products.
- Keith Cronin
_____________________________________
"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write
faster than anybody who can write better."
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