RE: Style and Procedure Schema?

["Kevin Christy" <kevinchristy -at- socal -dot- rr -dot- com>]

Timothy:

I plan on spending more time mulling over what you're proposing, but a
couple of quick thoughts present themselves:

1) English language standards are worlds apart from computer language
standards, which are utterly unforgiving of spelling and syntax errors.  If
we want to have a World Wide Web or use C++, we have to have ironclad
standards.  Not so with English, where our complex brains are much more
forgiving of spelling and syntax mistakes.  I'm sorry if this seems like I'm
stating the obvious, but I think it needs to be stated if you're talking
about standards for tech writing and using computer industry standards as an
example.

2) Having said that, there obviously is a market for tech writing
guidelines; Microsoft started selling their style manual when they found out
that so many people outside of Microsoft wanted a copy of their internal
guide.

Perhaps what you're suggesting would be a Microsoft "Manual of Style for
Technical Publications" expanded to include... well, I'm not sure.  What are
you looking for that you wouldn't find in such a book?

Peace!

Kevin


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