Developing a Style Guide in the Real World  

Style guides present a series of rules for standardizing writing. Style guide developers run the risk of concentrating too much on these rules, and too little on other factors that may ultimately affect the quality of the documents that are governed by the style guide. I would like to consider some of these other factors in this paper. I’ve drawn this discussion from Battelle’s efforts developing style guides in various industries. Another reason to involve your clients in the development process is to help ensure that the style guide includes the information they will need. For example, we included tips on using Microsoft Word in a style guide that would be used by writers working in Word. Don’t be afraid to be creative when deciding what to include in your style guide; if it gives writers a reason to look something up in the style guide,

Wieringa, Douglas. STC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>Documentation>Style Guides

Working with Government Documentation Standards: A Case Study  

This paper discusses the software development process at a particular government agency, the documentation standards used by that agency, the problems caused by these standards, and some of the solutions that have helped the technical communication there to work through the problems and still create documents of use to the reader.

Chiricosta, Tracey C. and Irene Lea Taylor. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Documentation>Style Guides>Government