Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry, Third Edition
£18.00
This award-winning guide to creating clear, consistent, and easy-to-understand documentation covers everything from grammar and writing style to typographic and legal guidelines. The authors, who are senior editors and writers at Sun Microsystems, share their extensive experience and provide practical tips and recommendations, including guidance on hiring writers, working with illustrators, managing schedules and workflow, and more.
The third edition of Read Me First features new chapters on:
- Writing for wikis and encouraging wiki collaboration
- Creating screencasts, using screencast terminology, and guidelines for writing narration
- Creating alternative text for nontext elements such as screen captures, multimedia content, illustrations, and diagrams
It also includes new tables for symbol name conventions, for common anthropomorphisms, and for common idioms and colloquialisms. An updated and expanded recommended reading list suggests additional resources.
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Additional information
| Publisher | 3rd edition (17 Dec. 2009), Prentice Hall |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 462 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0137058268 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0137058266 |
| Dimensions | 19.05 x 2.67 x 22.86 cm |
by Oz
If you are going to write instructional or training documentation, you really do need to read this first. There’s a 30-odd page section on writing for GUIs that beats Microsoft’s style guide hands down. It’s well written, clear, and removes all that usual fudge that MS and others are guilty of adding to an already fudgey mix. The explanation of how to use active voice is especially clear and I frequently point people to this book. Excellent stuff.