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126. #14189 NASA Guide to Grammar, Punctuation, and Capitalization: A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors This publication is directed toward professional writers, editors, and proofreaders. Those whose profession lies in other areas (for example, research or management), but who have occasion to write or review others' writing will also find this information useful. By carefully studying the examples and revisions to these examples, you can discern most of the techniques in my editing 'bag of tricks'; I hope that you editors will find these of particular interest. McCaskill, Mary K. NASA (1990). Reference>Style Guides>Writing 127. #24042 As writers and editors, we understand instinctively that readers need transitions, but we also work at getting rid of unnecessary words. Dahl, Elisabeth. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Articles>Writing>Style Guides 128. #20455 Nonstandard Quotes: Superimpositions and Cultural Maps We regularly chastise students for placing quotation marks around words that are not direct quotations. Yet, as this research shows, professionals use nonstandard quotations routinely and to rhetorical advantage. After analyzing the various purposes nonstandard quotations serve, I argue student use of the marks jars us not because it departs from good practice but because, through them, students invoke voices we do not want to recognize. Schneider, Barbara. CCC (2002). Articles>Style Guides>Standards>Rhetoric 129. #25029 Not a Style Guide: Creating a Quick Reference Grammar Guide for Writers When approached by a group of curriculum design specialists to develop a job aid that would help analysts and trainers solve some of their most common writing problems, the Multinational Customer and Service Education (MC&SE) editing group from Xerox Corporation went to work to produce The Write Stuff: When to Use a Comma and Other Writing Rules. This paper focuses on the Leadership Through Quality process the editors used to develop this reference tool. It also describes how The Write Stuff addresses some of the most common writing problems editors encounter in the course of a working day. Cowan, Elisabeth J.S., Raymond J. Doughty Paul F. Ferguson, Ted Moss, and Karen Sliva. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Editing>Style Guides 130. #10672 Explains English parts of speech and gives several usage examples. 131. #10234 Online Style Guides: Getting Past Caps and Commas Style, and style guides, are perennial hot topic in the online content business. Many content professionals seem preoccupied with finding the ultimate, authoritative source with the final word on whether 'Internet' should be capitalized, or whether 'Web site' is one word or two. But in reality, such questions are among the least important concerns of online style. Where you put the punctuation doesn't matter nearly as much as how you shape and deliver your messages. Gahran, Amy. Contentious (2001). Articles>Style Guides>Online 132. #14334 This section was part of a chapter made up of the following: Content—provides strategies for thinking of useful content for writing projects, in other words, developing the content of a project. Organization—provides strategies for reviewing the sequence and arrangement of the contents of a writing project. Transitions—provides review strategies for checking the coherence of a writing project, in other words, the 'flow' of the project as created by the transitions. McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Style Guides 133. #20799 Painless Ways to Improve Colleagues' Grammar Instead of confronting individuals, raise all staff members' awareness. Use humor to help people recognize errors and remember correct usage. 134. #13975 The Passive In Technical and Scientific Writing Almost every discussion of technical or scientific style mentions the passive voice, usually as a stylistic evil to avoid. While I doubt that many of us would endorse such extreme prescriptions as 'Always use the active voice,' or 'A writer will almost automatically improve his style when he shifts from passive to active constructions,' we may be more ready to accept Freedman's position in 'The Seven Sins of Technical Writing.' His Sin 6 is 'the Deadly Passive, or, better, deadening passive; it takes the life out of writing, making everything impersonal, eternal, remote and dead,'3 but he adds that 'frequently, of course, the passive is not a sin and not deadly, for there simply is no active agent and the material must be put impersonally.' Rodman, Lilita. JAC (1981). Articles>Writing>Style Guides 135. #24421 Polished Panache: The Empowered Corporate Style Guide A customized style guide is a document that defines the specific formatting, mechanical, punctuation, and spelling standards for your department or company. When you decide that you need a customized style guide, many questions arise: Where do you start? How do you get there? Exactly where is it you want to go? Are there more issues you need to define? Deciding that you need a customized style guide is the first hurdle. Persuading upper-level management to fund the guide is the second hurdle. And then it’s off to the races... Corbett, Lori. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Style Guides 136. #24162 Reconsidering Some Prescriptive Rules of Grammar and Composition Technical writers and editors are beset with rules. As authoritative as they are, published style guides such as The Chicago manual of style, MLA, APA, and Gregg do not address reading theory but hang their prescriptions on the flimsy mantle of tradition. This article challenges some putative rules of grammar and mechanics in an effort to improve technical texts for the people who read them. Connatser, Bradford R. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Style Guides>Grammar 137. #20002 The Reference Book That Editorial Eye Built About three years ago we were asked whether we would be interested in writing a new and different kind of style manual: * In addition to covering all the traditional style topics, such as capitalization and punctuation, it would have chapters on grammar, confusable words, usage (including bias-free language), and all aspects of production, from design and typography to desktop publishing and printing. * Its audience would be the vast majority of working writers and editors, not just those who work with scholarly manuscripts. * It would be written and organized in a friendly, easy-to-read style and reflect the impact of the computer on every aspect of the publishing process. Although we were a bit cowed at the thought of tackling such a big project -- it turned out to be 836 pages -- we didn't see how we could turn down the chance to create a guide that was truly useful. Sutcliffe, Andrea J. Editorial Eye, The (2003). Articles>Style Guides>Writing 138. #14008 La puntuación de los textos escritos, con la que se pretende reproducir la entonación de la lengua oral, constituye un capítulo importante dentro de la ortografía de cualquier idioma. De ella depende en gran parte la correcta expresión y comprensión de los mensajes escritos. La puntuación organiza el discurso y sus diferentes elementos y permite evitar la ambigüedad en textos que, sin su empleo, podrían tener interpretaciones diferentes. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. (Spanish) Reference>Style Guides>Writing>Spanish 139. #20474 Reported Speech: a Tense Issue The tense of the verb in a statement is, as a general rule, shifted back in time in reported speech. 140. #13976 The Rhetoric of the Paragraph: A Reconsideration Efforts to define the fundamental structures that enable meaning in discourse have a long history, beginning with ancient speculation. Classical logic, rhetoric, and grammar imposed restrictions on the processes of composing, as well as the shapes of finished texts, in order to safeguard the truth by attending to prerequisites for its effective communication. From earliest times, a concern for vindicating some larger moral order, and for teaching others to appreciate it, has often motivated pronouncements on the nature of verbal form. From Quintilian to the present, for example, teacher-scholars have striven to insure that logical and aesthetic values celebrated in the classical doctrine of decorum are made suitably manifest in student performance, as though to enforce publicly accepted styles of thought and action by reference to acceptable forms of language. Knoblauch, C.H. JAC (1981). Articles>Writing>Style Guides 141. #25309 Sample IEEE Documentation Style for References References to sources should be numbered sequentially by order of mention in the text, with the number placed in brackets and printed on line (not as a super- or subscript) like [1]. 142. #15049 Sample Paper Formatted Using APA Style Guide A sample research paper, formatted using the APA style guide. 143. #19769 Sample Paper Formatted Using CBE Style Guide A sample research paper, formatted using the CBE Style Guide. 144. #19768 Sample Paper Formatted Using Chicago Style A sample research paper, formatted using the Chicago Style. 145. #15048 Sample Paper Formatted Using MLA Style Guide A sample research paper, formatted using the MLA style guide. 146. #10272 The Scientific Style Manual: A Reliable Guide to Practice? Is the scientific style manual a reliable guide with regard to the organization and content of the typical scientific article? The answer is, yes and no. Style manuals do provide much sound advice based on their authors' personal experience. However, they also pass on some advice at odds with recently published literature regarding how scientists actually conduct research and write up their findings. This article presents a revised model for the scientific article, a model base don information in recently published research on communication in science. Harmon, Joseph E. and Alan G. Gross. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Style Guides>Scientific Communication 147. #24031 Review: Scientific Style Manual Aspires to International Scope Despite what some U.S. editors may see as flaws or debatable recommendations, sooner or later anyone who edits scientific writing will consult Scientific Style and Format. Some may disagree with its style conventions, but they can be defended as serving the editors' stated goal of achieving a uniform international style for scientific publications. Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Resources>Reviews>Style Guides>Scientific Communication 148. #10618 Scriptorium: Mechanics and Usage A style guide is essential for a successful project. Many of our clients have their own style guidelines, which we follow to ensure that our work matches what they produce in-house. However, some clients do not have internal style guides. We have developed our own style guide to ensure our work on their projects is consistent. Putting the style guide on the web eliminates distribution problems and ensures that we always use the latest version. Scriptorium (2001). Reference>Style Guides 149. #14332 Problems involving sentence-style cause writing to be unclear, wordy, unemphatic, and difficult to read. But sentences with these kinds of style problems are not necessarily grammatically incorrect—--nor do they violate any of the commonly accepted standards of usage. Yes, perfectly wretched, unreadable writing can be perfectly error-free! Federal, state, and local government—as well as academicians and lawyers in general—have long been the primary resource for wordy, pompous, and just plain bad writing. However, with the Plain English Movement, William Clinton's 1998 Presidential Memorandum on Plain Language, and similar events in state and local governments— government writing is becoming less and less an easy target. This chapter reviews some of the most common sentence-style problems, showing how to recognize them and how to fix them. Surely many others exist —we've just not trapped and labeled them yet. But in the wilds of bad writing, being able to recognize and revise sentence-style problems covered in this chapter will take you a long way—and enable you to recognize other types of problems as well. McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Style Guides>Minimalism 150. #20467 A simple definition of a sentence is: a set of words that expresses a complete thought and contains a subject and a predicate. Let's look at this.
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