Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications

Even more alarming are sections that address elements of style and grammar. They are desultory and often questionable. As a tecnical writer with an English degree who works in the software industry, I advise getting Fowlers Modern English Usage or the Chicago Manual of Style. The techies need to leave grammar and style to the pros.


The Stylebook for Technical Projects   June 25, 2001
 20 out of 24 found this review helpful

If you are writing a technical oriented project, this is the stylebook. As opposed to the Chicago Manual and the AP Stylebook, this compendium address the technical grammar issue your will encounter.

Unlike other "new economy" stylebooks, this is traditional. You can submit projects using it to crusty, old traditional editors without fear of embarrassing yourself. The word "Data" remains plural; the preposition "over" refers to spatial relationships, "more than" numeric relationships. It is easy to use and comes with a CD-ROM, which aids accessibility.

When I was first introduced to this book, I must admit I thought, "Why bother?" Having bought it and used it extensively, I now think, "Don't do without."


How to look real good--even if it is Microsoft   November 18, 1999
 16 out of 16 found this review helpful

This is an outstanding publication for anyone who uses Microsoft products, particularly Word.

The genius is in its simplicity. Organized alphabetically, with tabbed pages, the index is almost unnecessary. The two Appendii, "List of Acronyms and Abbreviations" and "Special Characters" are helpful, but probably won't get much use here. A CD-ROM comes with the book, but it's faster to pick up the book and go straight to the information you need. (I love books.)

The information is comprehensive, easy to find, easy to read and understand. Several screen shots "show, don't tell". Bonus: there's plenty to disagree with.

Even though it is thoroughly Microsoftesque, it probably will become the standard which serious computer users rely upon. Professionals and novices can use this book on a daily basis. There's a great education in this book. I wish I had written it.

It not only covers the basics (grammar, punctuation and the like), but standardizes many terms and functions relating to computers, the Web, Help systems--even ordinary documents. Macintosh computer users will find great information here, too.

If you want your work to look good, this book should be on your desk.


The bible of IT style   March 26, 2001
 15 out of 17 found this review helpful

Recently:

The bible of style for IT. Many corporations need something like this to create a style guide. I reviewed this manual a few years ago for Amazon and for Microsoft.

The third edition is now several years old, and it shows. It shows the aches and pains of teenage angst. It hardly knows the Internet exists. It joins the AP and Chicago manuals of style in thinking e-mail must be hyphenated, for example, when convention abandoned such proper use a long time ago.

However. However, as the only bible for the IT industry, the Microsoft manual is extremely helpful. It is the only independent, arbitrary judge to resolve prickly spelling and punctuation issues not easily found from a single, authoritative source online. This means it is often the only arbitrary judge. That the fact that Microsoft is the author often doesn't sit well with IT professionals who make hating Microsoft a occupational trait. But Linux or Macromedia don't have manuals of style for IT. Nobody else does. So this also means that the guide is extremely useful for checking:

*Do's, don'ts and alternatives for using technical terms
*Best practices for writing and tagging Web content
*Dialog boxes and error messages
*Standards for accessible communications
*Fast answers on proper spelling, grammar and punctuation

It provides a universal grammarian for technical publications:

*Formatting Content and layout
*Content for software developers
*Indexing and attributing
*Common style problems
*Grammatical elements
*Punctuation

The manual defines standards and best practices for technical writers, editors and content managers from accessibility and globalization issues to mobile computing, XML as well as Microsoft-specific products, technologies, and initiatives; writing for software developers. The manual helps maximize the impact of technical communications. It also has a section just for software developers.

I got my copy a few years back. I still it check about once a day! I mark my copy each time I look up a word or a term (Wikipedia is more thorough, but it is not a IT style book). Most pages have at least one mark. After all, who remembers if "log on" as a verb is two words, while login as a username is one? Plus it helps with IT professionals who say every screen shot is a window and that all boxes are PCs. NOT.

Years ago:
For technical writers with anything to do with computers, this is the book. There are not too many to choose from anyway and this one is well organized, authoritative, not too expensive and very useful. Rather than re-iterate the points already made, I would like to add:

Version three of this blue cover book was copyrighted in 1998, so while it is extremely useful in setting departmental or corporate standards for thousands of computer terms, it is already slipping behind the steady stream of new computer words. Perl, for example, is a popular language for the Internet and while it is an acronym, it is not capitalized. The MS manual does not mention it.

Microsoft does indeed have many manuals published through its MS Press publishing arm and this manual clearly sets out exactly what their word style and use should be. This makes the manual some of what it claims to be (" a standard reference for technical writers"). It would not be enough however, for editors and journalists (another of its claims). For writing professionals, the weighty Chicago manual is irreplaceable as the style standard - the MS Manual is useful as a computer word companion.

I recommended this manual as a standard setting guide for our company and it has been a quite useful and inexpensive tool. At first, the book was used several times a day. Now, almost a year later, it is still opened about once a week. (E-mail is hyphenated, PING is an acronym.) Especially useful are the proper names for all the parts of windows, screen, buttons, etc.

The CD version included with the book is not so useful. An open Internet connection with T1 lines will call up a [...] bookmark faster than your CD drive can wake up. The alphabetical layout of the book makes it a quicker and more useful reference than the CD.

Layout style standards or advice is not given in this manual. No suggestions are made for banners, headlines, gutters, mastheads, graphics, photographs or hyperlinks. This sticky area of personal opinion and taste remains a wrestling mat issue for you to tackle on your own.


Sorta' useful book, near-useless CD-ROM   June 6, 2005
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

I frequently document software that uses Windows GUI elements. So I've been using the WinHELP and HTMLHelp versions of the MS MOS for several years: Those earlier online versions of Microsoft's Style Guide made it easier and faster to take a quick look at a GUI naming or usage convention.

Lamentably the CD-ROM that accompanies the new version 3 of the MS MOS is a giant step backwards in usability. That's because the two PDF "e-books" (MOS and Networking Encyclopedia) on the CD-ROM are entirely static -- they contain NO clickable links WHATSOEVER.

What this means is that if you locate an entry in the on-line version's TOC or Index, you must use the "go to page" tool in Adobe Acrobat Reader to go to the page. This is an especially silly situation given that the PDFs meta-properties indicate that Microsoft used Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 (not Word) to produce the Style Guide: FrameMaker creates clickable cross-references by default, meaning that Microsoft manually disabled them as part of producing the Style Guide's PDF! (The third item on the CD-ROM, the Computer Dictionary comes as an HTMLHelp .chm file, so there are no problems with navigation there...)

If you intend to buy the print version of the MS MOS you'll be satisfied. If you intend to buy this book because you want the latest, greatest *on-line* version of the Style Guide, FORGET IT.

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08 July, 2008 UPDATE. After using the PDF for about three years, I'm even more frustrated by Microsoft's incomptence. In the name of "intellectual property" (one of Microsoft's favorite words), the company has created a nearly-useless PDF while failing to truly achieve its misguided security aims.

As I said in my original review, the lack of clickable cross-references means you must instead manually go to a page listed in the TOC or Index. But wait -- the geniuses at Microsoft didn't bother to correlate the PDFs logical and physical page numbers. Yes, if we have full-featured Acrobat we can manually number the pages so that when we tell Acrobat or Reader to go page "x" it actually displays the desired page and not page "x-4" or thereabouts. But why should we have to do that?

But wait, it gets worse. We can't use full-featured Adobe Acrobat (as opposed to reader) to extract pages from the PDF and save them as a separate PDF. BUT we can -- and here's the absurdity -- delete all pages we don't want to extract and save the result of that as a PDF. So we can extract pages, but not directly...

We also can't print *any part* of the PDF. So if we want to print, say, four pages about heading usages we can't do that. The style guidelines are in some way "proprietary" I guess, and so simply must be protected against unauthorized sharing...

Then, too, while looking for a way to print a few pages, I discovered that I couldn't export the PDF as a Postscript or encapsulated Postscript, but I could export it as a Word or Word RTF file. So we can save the contents in some unlocked formats but not others. Brilliant...

In the end, Microsoft's preoccupation with "locking up" the online version of its Style Guide has only succeeded in wrecking the Guide's usability while only partially achieving the desired level of security. How like Microsoft to get it wrong that way...