Writing Better Reports: A Handbook for Civil and Environmental Engineers  

Based on faculty concerns, this handbook offers guidelines and exercises to help you improve your technical style.

Adams, David. Michigan State University (2003). Reference>Style Guides>Writing

Writing Consistently Across Media: Ten Proofreading Tips

Last time I wrote about consistency in online writing. Soon after, I received an email from Leslie Drechsler, a reader in Tustin, CA: 'As a Marketing Communications Specialist, I'd love to hear your ideas on how to successfully implement consistency in an established business,' she wrote. 'I thought developing a company style guide would solve the problem. But perhaps there are other ways to approach it. 'Perhaps this could be the subject of another article.' Here's that article, Leslie.

Henning, Kathy. ClickZ (2001). Articles>Editing>Style Guides>Writing

Writing English for a Global Readership

As first-language English users we often need to communicate effectively with people for whom English is a foreign or a second language, for instance when conducting business internationally. The Internet, particularly, is a global medium of communication, and we cannot assume that everyone reads or understands English flawlessly.

Asterisks.com (1999). Reference>Style Guides>Writing

Writing Processes

Our Writing Guides help you locate information quickly on specific topics. These guides focus on a range of composing processes as well as issues related to the situations in which writers find themselves.

Colorado State University. Articles>Style Guides>Writing>Rhetoric

Writing Resources Online

This annotated directory features Web sites focusing on English grammar, concise writing, style and usage, the writing process, words, plain language, creativity, word play, action writing, reference sources, online writing experts, books on writing, and favorite fiction writers. You'll also find lists of Web sites on punctuation, avoiding bias, overcoming writer's block, spelling, vocabulary, and writing for the Web.

Garbl's Writing Center. Resources>Writing>Style Guides

Writing Revisable Manuals: A Guidebook for Business and Government

Writing Revisable Manuals–A Guidebook for Business and Government was written to help organizations prepare high quality manuals, quickly and inexpensively. There is a saying in technical writing that 'You can have it good, you can have it fast, or you can have it cheap. But you can’t have all three.' The goal of this guidebook is to show you how to have all three. Focusing on revisable manuals—the kind you can update easily—this guidebook takes you step-by-step through planning, writing, and producing manuals. If you are working on a manual for your organization, or will be in the near future, this guidebook is for you.

Duncan Kent and Associates Ltd. (2000). Reference>Style Guides>Documentation

Writing Style Guide

The following is a description of Florida Institute of Technology's in-house writing style for everything except technical papers and reports. This guide is set up alphabetically and contains listings that will allow you to standardize everything you write for the university. Reference materials include The Associated Press Stylebook And Libel Manual (Fully Revised and Updated 1998 Edition), Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary and McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (Fourth Edition).

Florida Institute of Technology. Reference>Style Guides>Writing

Writing Styleguide  

Many individuals and organizations develop styleguides to provide standards for the development of publications. Styleguides give rules and examples of writing style, word use, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and typographic conventions. These standards are used when writing all kinds of documents—manuals, newsletters, reports, proposals, letters, memos, and so on—to maintain consistency and quality. Our styleguide is organized alphabetically by keyword for quick reference.

Duncan Kent and Associates Ltd. (2002). Reference>Style Guides

Writing User-Friendly Documents

The traditional way of writing government documents has not worked well. Too often, it has produced complicated, jargon-filled documents that have resulted in frustration, lawsuits, and a lack of trust between citizens and their government. To overcome this legacy, the documents writers have a great responsibility to communicate clearly. Studies show that clearly written regulations improve compliance and decrease litigation. Writing that considers our readers' needs and draws them into the regulatory process improves the relationship between the government and the public it serves. Clear correspondence reduces the burden on the public. It also reduces the burden on the agency because we don't have to deal with the consequences of unclear communication.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management (2001). Reference>Style Guides>Writing

Review: You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online  

This book addresses the issues of online writing and particularly writing e-mail, which should concern all us who spend a good chunk of our days in front of a computer screen creating and replying to e-mail messages. The book is structured in three parts: 'The virtual mensch,' 'Alpha mail,' and 'Words of passage.'

Crawley, Charles R. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Style Guides>Email

404 File Not Found: Citing Unstable Web Sources    

Researchers, including students, must accommodate to the mutating character of hyperlinks on the World Wide Web. A small study of citations in three volumes of BCQ demonstrates the phenomenon of 'URL rot,' the disappearance of sites cited in the sample articles. Digital technology itself is now being used to create pockets of permanence, but with the understanding that preservation of content is only one ingredient in the mix of media and format migration. Databases like JSTOR offer digitally preserved copies of many scholarly journals. Online journals and search engines may offer their own archives. In general, researchers should cite digital articles in databases where possible and consider avoiding references to online journals with print editions.

Griffin, Frank. Business Communication Quarterly (2003). Articles>Research>Style Guides>Online

Style Guides? Dictionaries? Who Cares?

You should! Whether you're a corporate or a freelance communicator, a style guide and a dictionary are among your most important tools. And all the departments in your company or your client's company should be using the same ones, designated by their communication departments.

Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Writing>Style Guides