Writing Skills

general advice on writing, good style, grammar, and clarity

general advice on writing, good style, grammar, and clarity

Essays and Dissertations

July 10, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the basics of academic planning and writing skills

Oxford University Press have just brought out a series of short beginners’ manuals on communication skills. Their emphasis is on compact, no-nonsense advice directly related to issues of everyday life. Chris Mounsey’s Essays and Dissertations tackles the essentials of academic writing in a systematic manner. He begins with understanding and interpreting essay questions, then moves on to the research you might have to do to answer them.

This involves selecting books, finding quotes, and developing the outline of your own arguments. This is followed by the central point of almost all successful writing – planning. Next comes editing and writing drafts, then how to present your results, using a word processor.

Having covered these basics, he then moves up a notch to cover the more advanced skills of time management, Internet research, and alternative strategies for writing essays. This leads into the special problems posed by dissertations, then exams.

The book ends with a series of writing checklists, guidance on common mistakes, how to deal with footnotes and bibliography, and suggestions for further reading.

The chapters are short; almost every page has hints, tips, and quotes in call-out boxes, there are checklists and suggestions for further reading. The strength of this approach is that it avoids the encyclopedic volume of advice which in some writing guides can be quite frightening.

This book provides students at all levels with easy-to-follow guidance on how to structure an essay and how to select and research the most appropriate subject to write on. You will need more guidance when it comes to writing a long dissertation, but this book will certainly help you to reach that point.

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Chris Mounsey, Essays and Dissertations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.128, ISBN: 0198605056

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Essential English for Journalists

June 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guidance on good writing and editing techniques

Harold Evans was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981 and then of The Times for a year. [He’s now a New York celebrity with a famous wife]. His earlier publication Newsman’s English was written in the 1970s and has now been revised and updated. Essential English for Journalists is a guide to improving the efficiency of your writing by a method which he announces at the outset as ‘a process of editorial selection, text editing, and presentation’.

In fact he gets off to a slightly shambolic start by describing the various responsibilities for writing in the newsroom, but then settles down to his main subject – the crafting of good prose – where he is quite clearly at home. There’s plenty of good advice on sentence construction, editing for clarity, choice of vocabulary, avoiding obscurity and abstraction, plus eliminating vagueness and cliche. He also includes explanations of words commonly misunderstood – such as chronic, disinterested, and viable (to which he might have added aggravate, which is mistakenly used in the text as a synonym for annoy) – plus some interesting comments on how speeches can be economically digested and reported.

The general tendency of his advice is to prefer the shorter, concrete, and Anglo-Saxon term to the longer, abstract, and Latinate expression which is all-too-prevalent: fire not conflagration, try not endeavour, end not terminate.

He also offers a long and entertaining list of common expressions which roll out of literary-cum-oral usage whose redundancies can be edited to produce a tighter result – ‘blue coloured car’, ‘crisis situation‘, and ‘in the city of Manchester’

Evans gives detailed advice on the structure of good writing. His pages on how to write an introduction will be useful to anybody who wants to make their writing more effective. [In fact I would urge the strategy on those who would like to make the arguments of academic writing stand more clear.] The basic rule is to strike out anything which is not absolutely necessary.

In the centre of the book there is a detailed exposition of how newspaper reports should be written – with critical comments on their structure and narrative strategy. Evans shows how the same basic facts can be arranged to create different emphases. This is an exemplary tutorial for anyone who wishes to acquire the skills of reporting and successful composition.

For all its subject, it’s written in a slightly inflated style which combines the short journalist’s sentence with the vocabulary of an Edwardian litterateur – very self-conscious and aware of its own rhetorical devices.

Readers have not the time and newspapers have not the space for elaborate reiteration. This imposes decisive requirements.

But the advice is sound, and it’s likely to make you look more closely at your own prose. In fact the book has at least three possible readers. It would be an excellent textbook for trainee journalists, especially given the number of clumsy examples Evans quotes and then rewrites as demonstration pieces. Second, it has plenty of tips for experienced journalists and editors trying to write more efficiently. Third, it is full of useful guidance for anyone – beyond the media – who wants to write more coherently.

Evans’ fellow journalist Keith Waterhouse wrote a similar and very amusing guide called Waterhouse on Newspaper Style which unfortunately often seems to be out of print. The two books would make an excellent pairing on any writer’s desk. It would be wise to grab Evans whilst he’s back in re-issue.

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Harold Evans, Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers, London: Random House, 2nd revised edn 2000, pp.256, ISBN: 0712664475

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Full Marks punctuation for scientists

July 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

advice on punctuation for scientific and technical writing

Do scientists and technical writers need special advice on punctuation? Well, in one sense – who doesn’t? John Kirkman sets out here to answer what he describes as ‘the queries raised most frequently by practitioners in computing, engineering, medicine, and science as they grapple with day-to-day tasks in writing and editing’. So, it’s a guide based on practical experience, and probably the better for it. Punctuation for Scientists is a specialist style guide aimed at practicioners in these disciplines.

There is an introduction explaining why good punctuation is necessary. This is slightly more complex than it needs to be, and might more usefully been placed at the end of the book. But after that he gets down to a simple explanation of the basics – apostrophes, capitals, colons, commas, full stops, hyphens, and quotation marks. The advice might be aimed at technical authors, but there’s no reason why other writers shouldn’t profit from it.

One of the strengths of the book is that it has plenty of practical examples. Another is that John Kirkman has spent quite some time teaching in the USA, and he offers UK/US equivalents wherever appropriate, which gives the guide some added value for those who need to keep such matters in mind.

On the whole, he wisely avoids the jargon of grammar in his explanations, but there’s rather a lot of intrusive first person singular (which doesn’t always inspire confidence) and some of the advice is expressed in terms which are likely to confuse the very people it is written for:

English teachers may have told you that you should always signal restrictive intention by starting your relative clause with that…

Of course one might quibble with some of his recommendations (are continuous capitals ever necessary?) but he offers very sensible and non-dogmatic advice on issues such as the use of the hyphen in terms like ‘re-activate’, ‘de-energise’, and ‘re-adjust’, and he quite rightly alerts his readers to the different names used for brackets, parentheses, and braces in the UK, the US, and non-scientific writing. To a beginner this might seem like pedantry, but ultimately it’s the stuff of which accuracy and scholarship is made.

There are three appendices – one on paragraphing, one on word division (hyphenation at line ending) and one on differences between UK and US English. There’s a brief bibliography, a full index, and by current book price standards, it’s dirt cheap.

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John Kirkman, Full Marks: Advice on punctuation for scientific and technical writing, (3rd edn) Wiltshire: Ramsbury, 1999, pp.115, ISBN: 0952176246

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Hot Text: Web Writing That Works

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new writing techniques for web communication

If you’re thinking of putting some of your writing on line, keep this rule of thumb in mind. Write 50% less than you would in print – otherwise people will not read it. This is one of the hundreds of tips and guidelines packed into Jonathan and Lisa Price’s new book, Hot Text. They start with a chapter of advice on writing for an audience, and getting closer to the reader, then they move on to something I found fascinating – the concept of ‘writing objects’. This is the practice of splitting up documents into small re-useable parts. It’s basically a plea for applying XML principles during the authoring process. This will enable you to produce Web documents which can be used for any number of purposes.

This is intermediate to advanced level stuff – not for beginners – and you will need to be patient. There’s a lot of important technological data before they get round to any advice on writing skills. But when they do, it comes in bucketloads. Another important point they make is that text has a double function on the web. It conveys content, but it also acts as an aid to navigation, because we do not have the physical aids provided by printed books. For this reason they advise writers to use plenty of typographical guidance.

They also emphasise the need for brevity and chunking. You should use short sentences, short paragraphs, and make the structure of all documents stand clear in a self-explanatory manner.

Once they get under way, every point is illustrated with before and after examples – 200 words of exposition reduced to 50, for instance. They even deal with issues such as reducing punctuation and moving any statistical data into tables or charts.

The centre of the book is packed with good examples of how to produce efficient writing – leading with punch lines; reducing ambiguity; how to write menus; creating the right tone; how to arrange bulleted lists; and where to place links grammatically for best effect.

They use case studies of sites such as AltaVista, Microsoft, and Amazon to discuss the requirements of writing for eCommerce, and they are particularly good at the special requirements of writing Help files and FAQs.

For commercial sites they are relentlessly on the side of the customer – and the suggestions they offer will allow any honest trader to get closer to customers and win their trust. The formula is simple – be honest, put the customer first, and don’t waffle.

They cover a wide range of digital genres – web marketing copy, news releases, email newsletters, webzine articles, personal resumes, Weblogs – and they even provide tips for would-be job seekers.

Ignore the cheesy photos of the authors which punctuate their chapters. This book is packed with good advice on web writing and modern communication skills – and it’s a must-have for any web content developers, documentation authors, online course constructors, and e-Commerce editors.

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Jonathan and Lisa Price, Hot Text: Web Writing that Works, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.507, ISBN: 0735711518

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How to choose a dictionary

November 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

from pocket-size to the world’s largest reference

Dictionaries can be something of a personal matter. People become very attached to their favourite amongst the most-used of all reference books. However, a few guidelines on how to choose a dictionary can easily be established. The first thing to understand is that they are not all the same. They have their own characters and peculiarities, and they are created for different users.

Let’s start with the question of size. The smallest dictionaries, which you really can fit into your pocket, are only suitable for a quick check of spelling and meaning in most commonly used words. These are mini-books the size of cigarette packets, which often end up in your desk drawer. The Oxford English Minidictionary manages to pack 40,000 entries and 50,000 definitions into a miraculously small space – and throws in a few extra pages which offer solutions to common problems. Keep this in your briefcase, or take it along to the pub quiz, but for serious work you’ll need something bigger.

The Little Oxford Dictionary is the next size up. This is a more serious attempt to be useful, with 51,000 entries and supplementary information on each word, including how it should be pronounced. It also includes occasional panels of advice on grammar and good usage, plus a supplement of words which have come into the language during the 1990s. This is one for the desktop or your briefcase, and probably the smallest you can go if you are going to consult a dictionary regularly.

Collins offer an alternative to the Oxford domination of the dictionary market. Their books are popular because they generally make clear page layout a priority. The Collins Pocket Dictionary contains 44,500 definitions, plus advice on grammar and common problems. It claims to be ‘in colour’ – but all this turns out to mean is that headwords and their variants are printed in red – which makes the pages look as if they’ve got measles.

Amongst the ‘portables’, the Heinemann English Dictionary is specially designed for use in schools. Not only is each entry very clearly presented, but parts of speech are spelt out in full, not abbreviated as is usual in dictionaries. Pronunciation is explained, and there are pull-out boxes with gems of etymology on certain words. It has been created with the UK National Curriculum in mind – and has proved to be popular as a reference for the classroom.

The New Oxford Dictionary focuses on English as it is really used in the late 20th century. Compiled after in-depth analysis of computerized databases of current English, this dictionary is the first to base its coverage on the evidence of real English. A rapid-reference page design separates out parts of speech, word histories, and phrases. The most modern meaning of each word, as used by the majority of people, is placed first within each entry. Contemporary rules are given on question of usage, providing relevant advice on problems old and new. Word history notes explain the linguistic roots of words and tell the story of how a word’s meaning and form have changed over time. Modern pronunciations are also given, using the internationally recognized system.

If you are buying a dictionary for serious use, paperbacks can be a false economy. Very often, hardback editions only cost slightly more – and they will last you a lifetime. Treat yourself!

It’s official! The word techie – a devotee of technology – has made it into the Chambers Dictionary. And there are a slew of other net-specific words too, including netiquette, browsing, applet, spam, cybersex and cybercafé. It just goes to show how the world of computing and electronic communications has advanced and changed our world. Of course, there are also those other little things that have become part of our lives: Prozac, sound bite, cellulite…

Collins dictionaries have always scored well on contemporary relevance and accessibility. The latest ‘Millennium’ edition of the Collins English Dictionary has increased the previous content by twenty percent, and there are useful guiding headers at the top of the pages, and the headword entries are printed in a no-nonsense non-serif font which I find unexpectedly easy to read. Besides answering the questions usual to dictionaries there are many encyclopedic entries which make this a valuable work of general reference. It also carries notes on language use which might be studied by those who think they speak English correctly.

Collins also have on offer a ‘two-books-in-one’ Dictionary and Thesaurus. This carries 71,000 entries, plus a quarter of a million synonyms. Normal dictionary entries appear in the top half of each page, whilst the bottom half presents lists of synonyms and antonyms. This is a simple but very effective device which encourages browsing and learning about language. A useful choice if you need to combine two sources of reference in one.

The most popular of the one-volume desktop dictionaries is the Concise Oxford Dictionary. This contains explanations, pronunciation, and the etymology of over 40,000 headwords. It also adds notes on any disputed or controversial terms, and includes American spellings. This is a great favourite with writers and students, and a basic minimum for a civilized library. If you can only afford one dictionary – make it this one.

If you want an illustrated dictionary, Encarta has recently been released as one volume – to some acclaim. It represents both the diversity of English as a language spoken around the world, and an attempt to capture up-to-date usage. If you want a picture of an aardvark and details of zygotes – Encarta has them. It offers variant spellings, meanings, and pronunciations in more than 100,000 entries comprising some 3.5 million words. If, for example, your Asian correspondent asks you for your biodata, you can quickly and painlessly learn that she needs your curriculum vitae. There are more than 3,000 black-and-white illustrations and 10,000 biographical and geographical entries. This is Microsoft making good use of its linguistic database.

Moving towards the heavier, more serious resources for writers, students, and teachers who want the sort of books in their homes which are normally only available in libraries, the New Shorter Oxford is a firm favourite. It’s big, comprehensive, and scholarly, and is based on the monumental Oxford English Dictionary. All entries have been re-written to reflect contemporary usage. This is one which should be considered as a minimum for serious writers and researchers. It comes in two handsomely-produced volumes, which are a sound investment. Its also just been re-issued in a Oxford’s new easy-to-read format.

The Compact OED [an accurate but amazingly misleading title] is just about as far as you would need to go without being a library acquisitions officer or a professional lexicographer. It’s a two-volume version of the complete OED – but photo-reduced, so that the text is laid out in a font size of about six points. The volumes are issued as a cased set with a magnifying glass – and you’ll need it. But here’s the good news. It works. So you save on storage space, yet have access to the contents of the twenty volume version. I picked one up second hand, and use it all the time.

Of course when we get to the biggest and best dictionary of the English Language, and a towering monument of bibliographic scholarship – then it’s the complete Oxford English Dictionary. This is now twenty printed volumes and had become rather expensive to produce. There are the two options available. You can have the convenience, speed, and reliability of the whole database on a single disk. Keep it in your D: drive and the world’s biggest lexical resource can be summoned with a mouse-click. The alternative is to subscribe to the online version, which will be permanently updated. It’s worth noting that the OED editors have decided to adopt an all-inclusive policy. New English, slang, jargon, and even obscenities are all listed.

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How to Write

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

basic writing skills explained in easy stages

This is an introductory guide to writing, aimed at people who think they can’t write, or for whom writing is an ordeal. Broken down into short topic-based chapters on everything from beginning to revising, it demystifies the writing process by taking the reader through each stage necessary to bring a piece of writing to a decent finish. Follow the advice, and you will learn how to write. Alastair Fowler kicks off by considering the advantages and disadvantages of composing and editing directly on a computer screen.

Then comes a series of short chapters, each one dealing with a different aspect of the writing process: outlines, drafts, paragraphs, sentences, arguments, punctuation, researching, and grammar. His model is formal academic writing, but his advice will be of use to anybody who wants to understand writing skills and improve their own. He deals with those tricky issues that distress beginners, such as ‘making a start’, and offers tips which at first glance can seem counter-intuitive, but reveal a voice of experience:

For most sorts of writing, the best way to begin is not to. Or rather, to have already begun in the past.

He also covers how to plan what you intend to write, and how to create order in what it will contain; then how to flesh out your rough notes into a first draft.

Beginners will also find it reassuring that he shows how to get a feel for the scale of a piece of writing – how to assess the required length and thereby the scope of its content.

I also found his advice on paragraphs sound. Once you have grasped the concept of structure and rhythm in a paragraph, most other problems of construction and format should fall easily into place.

He goes into quite some detail on how to construct persuasive arguments. It is in this sense that the book really is fundamentally about writing essays, and I think on reflection that it’s for people who have mastered the basics of writing and who wish to hone their skills.

Next comes how to arrange the parts of a sentence to make meaning clearer, and then an explanation of all the common marks of punctuation, which he manages with being either pedantic or boring. (If you want advice on punctuation delivered in a humorous manner, try Lynne Truss’ excellent Eats, Shoots & Leaves.)

For those who really are brushing up their essay writing skills, Fowler has some useful advice on quotation – how to do it, and what real function it serves. The same is true of plagiarism, which he discusses in the light of re-working other people’s ideas in a legitimate manner.

He finishes with a conducted tour of the available reference books and guidance notes on writing skills – which is a lot more useful than just a bare, unannotated bibliography. It’s a short book, but probably all the more useful for that – and amazingly good value at the price.

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Alastair Fowler, How to Write, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.202, ISBN: 0199278504

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How to Write Critical Essays

July 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

advice on writing academic essays – from start to finish

David Pirie’s sub-title here is ‘a guide for students of literature’ – but his advice will be useful for anybody in the arts or humanities. What he offers is to talk you through the process, from understanding the question to producing and submitting the final draft. He adopts a very sensible approach, and the advice he offers is timeless. The essay as an academic exercise has endured because it is both a form of intellectual self-discovery and a flexible yet taxing means of assessment. He starts with analysing and understanding questions, then organising the ‘research’ for your answer – including detailed advice on taking notes. All this quickly becomes an introduction to literary criticism.

His chapter on devising a suitable structure for an essay explores the standard approaches to this task. These are discussing the arguments for and against a proposition; following the chronological order of events; and constructing a logical sequence of topics. I think a few more concrete examples would have been helpful here. The chapter on how to make a detailed case is more useful, precisely because he examines a series of concrete examples, showing how to quote and examine selected passages. The same is true of his chapter on style, where he illustrates his warnings against repetition, vagueness, generalisation, plagiarism, and overstatement.

There’s something eloquent yet curiously old-fashioned about his prose style. The voice is like an audio recording of someone speaking to us from an earlier age. And he uses phrases which flatter his readers. He talks about students ‘writing criticism’ – as if their coursework exercises were about to be published.

It’s a shame there is no bibliography or index. These are omissions which should be rectified if the book ever makes its long-overdue second edition.

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David Pirie, How to Write Critical Essays: a guide for students of literature, London: Routledge, 1985, pp.139, ISBN: 0415045339

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Internet Writer’s Guide

June 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

advice plus extensive online resources for authors

How can the Internet help authors today? Isn’t writing still just a matter of putting pen to paper? There are so many new developments in electronic publishing, free web space, media mergers, and online bookshops: won’t these take our attention away from being creative? Well yes, they might. But they also open up exciting new possibilities. That’s why Jane Dorner has written The Internet: A Writer’s Guide – as a road map through the maze.

She starts from the most logical point – how to get connected, what equipment you need, and how to operate the essentials. In the discussion of email she begins to consider the special needs of writers – how to send attachments; how to submit work to publishers; even how to conduct email interviews.

On the Web, she explains the techniques of efficient searching, how sites are used for publishing, and what to do when it all goes wrong.

She touches on writing groups which exist in the form of mailing lists, websites, newsletters, chat groups, and conferences. The strength of this approach is that given a little trial and error, most writers will be able to locate the sort of forum which suits them best.

There’s an interesting chapter on electronic publishing and what are now becoming known as e-book readers. This is very timely, as the market potential for this type of distribution has just opened up again with the success of products such as the 3″ X 5″ PalmPilot – the latest version of which can download Web pages and e-books off the Net, but still fit in your shirt pocket.

She then explores both the new opportunities for writers created by the Internet and the practicalities of publishing on your own web site. I was glad to see that she didn’t waste too much time with coding and page layout, all of which can be picked up easily elsewhere. She concentrates instead on issues of copyright, payments, encryption, plagiarism, and censorship. These topics will be far more live issues for the majority of writers tempted by the possibilities of online publication.

But by far the best part of the book – the ‘killer app’ so far as most writers will be concerned – is the final chapter listing online resources. She gives annotated lists of all the sources a writer could possibly wish for – from libraries to bookshops, dictionaries to writing circles, newspapers to writing style guides, electronic publishers to free Internet service providers. Just working your way through the list with your browser open would be an education in itself. The list has been enlarged for the second edition – and made available at the book’s website.

What I like about this guide is that it combines a lightness of touch with a thoroughness of approach. It gets straight to the point, uses a minimum of technical jargon, and covers a wide range of topics pertinent to aspiring authors. If you are a writer, and you’re ready to explore a rich source of suggestions for what to do next with the Net, then buy this book. You will not regret it.

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Jane Dorner, The Internet : A Writer’s Guide, London: A & C Black, second edition 2001, pp.200, ISBN: 0713661267

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MHRA Style Guide

July 9, 2009 by Roy Johnson

pocket academic writing style guide for humanities

The key to this style guide is in its subtitle: ‘Notes for Authors, Editors, and Writers of Theses’. It has been produced by the Modern Humanities Research Association as a manual of advice and procedures for people preparing texts for publication. The MHRA Style Guide assembles a set of conventions to help users through the minutiae of the scholarly editing and presentation of texts.

If you are a student, a researcher, or a writer, the net result is a brief and very usable guide. One of its principal advantages over other guides is its brevity: it only includes the essentials, and everything is easy to find. And yet it covers everything you would normally require for academic writing or formal publication – from spelling, abbreviations, and punctuation through to the thorny issue of bibliographic referencing, which is what often drives students into fits of nail-biting frenzy.

It’s all very succinct, and yet manages to pack in the presentation of foreign languages, citations from articles, journals, and newspapers, and even a nod towards the Author-Date (or Harvard) system of referencing.

The latest edition has been expanded to cover preparing texts for electronic publication and there are sections on indexing and writing a thesis or a dissertation. There’s a glossary, sections on book reviews and correcting proofs, and a good index.

I first came across this book when it was chosen by the Open University as a set text for some of its postgraduate courses. Getting students to follow the conventions is still hard work, but it’s a lot easier than it used to be.

What I like most about the book is that it gives you the impression that you’re just about to publish an important piece of work. Since it’s also amazingly cheap, it’s worth buying as a confidence-booster alone.

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MHRA Style Guide: Notes for Authors, Editors, and Writers of Theses, London: Modern Humanities Research Association, new second edition 2008, pp.95, ISBN: 0947623620

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Microsoft Manual of Style

February 1, 2012 by Roy Johnson

guidelines for clear technical writing

Microsoft Manual of Style was produced in-house at Microsoft as the style guide for its army of writers who produce the help files and documentation for its products. Except that it’s been re-written for the public, and it’s completely non-prescriptive. They don’t say “This is the way it should be done”. They say “Here’s how we do it at Microsoft. You may find this approach useful”. It starts with a chapter describing the principles on which its house style is built – and these could profitably be adopted by any other organisation or business. Or any individual for that matter.

They are not at all particular to Microsoft, but aimed at producing seamlessly efficient communication. The principles include consistency of language, an empathetic attitude towards readers, precision, plain language, simplicity of sentence construction, a nod towards avoiding gender bias, and maintaining grammatical parallelism (which is very useful if you are writing instructions).

These issues are all illustrated by good and bad examples that show clearly the distinction to be made between for instance two apparently identical instructions::

Use this procedure to make any changes to your password.

Follow these steps to change your password.

The second has seven words instead of ten, less fuzz, and more clarity.

There’s a separate section on writing efficiently for the web. You should use the power of headings, sub-headings, bulleted lists, and well-chosen hyperlinks to maximise readability. There’s a specially valuable tip here. In each paragraph, put the conclusion first (what’s called the ‘inverted pyramid’ style) so that readers know if they wish to read on. People scan web pages rather than read them.

It’s not all about instructions and programs. The guidance assumes you might be using videos, blogs, and community-provided content such as wikis. It also keeps in mind that you might be writing for an international audience – but it points out that the guidelines for accommodating this are the same as for writing clearly and persuasively for English-speaking readers anyway. The maximum length of sentences should be twenty-five words.

For those people who will be writing about technology there’s a whole chapter on user interfaces – screens, menus, dialogue boxes, and toolbars – and how to write instructions that are clear and unambiguous. This is bang up to date, because to interact with contemporary devices you now need to include gesture (pich, swipe, zoom) as well as input via speech instructions and keyboard shortcuts.

More technical advice follows – on writing procedures (how to navigate through folders) how to describe cloud computing accurately, how to show code in support documentation, and fine details such as how to use filename extensions and when to use capitalization and bold.

There’s quite a lot on how to display numbers and when to use words (seven databases but a 24-hour day) how to show dates (February 12, 2012 – which is very non-standard) plus how to write captions and compile bibliographies.

On grammar and punctuation they understandably go for simplicity, clarity, and brevity. All the basic common sense rules are illustrated – but are then followed by some not-so-obvious but fascinating illustrations of indexing and list-ordering, including the order in which numerical entries will be listed. For instance 12-hour clock comes before 2-D charts.

There’s a huge list of acronyms with advice on when and when not to spell them out, and then the last half of the book is an alphabetical list of technical terms and commonly used words and phrases with illustrated explanations of good styling. They range from am/pm, through less and fewer, to ZIP codes and how to spell the plural of zero.

There are two indexes – one at the front and another at the back of the book – so it’s easy to find any detail you need to check. The latest fourth edition does its best to keep up to date with the ever expanding language of technology – app, cloud, and sync as well as terabyte (TB), petabyte (PB), and on up to yottabyte (YB). And it’s interesting to note that E-mail and Web site have now become email and website as these terms have now become part of everyday language.

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&copy Roy Johnson 2012

Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Manual of Style, Microsoft Press: Redmond (WA), fourth edition, 2012, pp.438, ISBN: 0735648719

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Writing skills – an annotated bibliography

Editing and Revising Text

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Writing Skills

general advice on writing, good style, grammar, and clarity

the basics of academic planning and writing skills

guidance on good writing and editing techniques

advice on punctuation for scientific and technical writing

new writing techniques for web communication

from pocket-size to the world’s largest reference

basic writing skills explained in easy stages

advice on writing academic essays – from start to finish

advice plus extensive online resources for authors

pocket academic writing style guide for humanities

guidelines for clear technical writing

Style guide links

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