It is all about style!

Posted on | June 22, 2008 | No Comments

“Style noun, verb styled, styl·ing. the mode of expressing thought in writing or speaking by selecting and arranging words, considered with respect to clearness, effectiveness, euphony, or the like, that is characteristic of a group, period, person, personality, etc. ”

Clothing and style are directly proportional and so are content and style. You must have a unique sense to leave a style statement. While fashion has taken a stride leaving a mark everywhere, style has been the cynosure behind. With style as the guiding star, there have been tremendous changes in all industries and not just the fashion industry.

Technical documentation, a trend that appeared First World War on, started with the initial need for documentation in military, electronics, aerospace and manufacturing industries. The legacy of the discipline, however, has carried through and is apparently used in all industries today. No industry and no business, for that matter, move a step without documentation. Along its path towards making a star appearance in all industries, giving them an exponential growth, it has continuously undergone constructive changes.

Style in Content

Documentation, though, has become an integral part of every process in all industries; style has proven to be the essence. Everyone has a different writing style but the thumb rule is to have three C’s – Clarity, Conciseness, and Consistency. While clarity and conciseness chum together giving a style to everything you write; consistency gives a smooth look. There are yet other rules that gear-up the documentation.

Before finalizing a document, ask yourself:

• If the words used make sense. Ensure they convey what you actually wanted to
• If the length is enough to transfer the information to destination without losing its meaning on the way. Check for the unnecessary inflation. For example, ‘in order to’ can be replaced by ‘to’
• If there are too many jargons to confuse the target audience
• If the words have been spelled correctly. Often we end up using the counterpart of words that spell alike or sound alike, but are actually different
• If you have used noun instead of the verb form of the word or vice versa, for example advice (verb) and advise (verb)
• If you have not created an adjective noun combination, where the adjective describes the noun that follows, for example – parallelable, which should be parallel cable
• If you have used politically correct or gender neutral language
• If you have used too much of passive voice. It should not be more than 10%
• If the paragraphs are closely woven. The transition from paragraph to paragraph within a topic, and from sentence to sentence within a paragraph, should be smooth
• If the acronyms are expanded at the first occurrence and no where else in the document
• If you have used redundant expressions; avoid redundancy to add clarity and conciseness

Style in Presentation

Some other definitions of style also denote:

“The rules or customs of typography, punctuation, spelling, and related matters used by a newspaper, magazine, publishing house, etc., or in a specific publication”

or

“A customary manner of presenting printed material, including usage, punctuation, spelling, typography, and arrangement”

The above connotations suggest another formula for style:

Style = Presentation

Quite often, we fail to realize that poor sale of a software product is due to poor product presentation rather than the quality of the product, an organization has released. The product might have a robust and strong functionality running at the back-end, but customers out rightly reject products that have a poor front-end designing. The presentation is of equal importance and this applies to documentation as well.

Before you release a document, ensure that the document:

• Doesn’t have extraneous punctuation
• Doesn’t have extra spaces between words (Tip: Press Ctrl + F to find a space followed by a comma (,) or a period (.) to avoid spaces before a comma and a period)
• Complies with the template in terms of formatting styles defined
• Has numbered list for defined sequence and bulleted list otherwise
• Has important points and terms highlighted
• Has a table of content, index and glossary (in case of user manuals etc.)
• Uses icons and buttons wherever required. Prefer the actual representation of icons/buttons instead of simply writing the label names

Style with Substance

Style though is directly proportional with presentation, but all style with no quality of content is of no avail. Extending the previous example further, a software product with a great GUI, but poor performance serves no purpose. A quality document thus, should have style with substance.

Happy writing!

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