Style Guides for beginner

[CanAussie]

G'day,

Where can I look for guidance on the basics on writing a manual?

i.e What to bold, what to italicize and any else that would colour me anything but green.

CanAussie

[NorthEast]

Well, the good news is you're actually one big step ahead of the average beginner by actually thinking ahead about having style guidelines. Work out what styles you need from the start, then apply them consistently throughout.

I don't have any links to hand, but maybe have a look at a website/help/manual that you like, and er... borrow some of its ideas!


In terms of your actual styles, one thing I would suggest is not applying any formatting like bold and italics, and set up styles based on what the style is used for.

Why?
For example, say you want to format all the references to controls on screen the same way, e.g. click OK, or select File > Save.
You could just apply bold to all these references, but then perhaps later someone wants you to change all these from bold to pink italics; you're stuck, because you applied formatting rather than a style.
Now, if you set up a span class for these references, e.g. span.controls, then that means you can easily change the look of the style from bold to pink italics.

[KevinDAmery]

You should also be able to find the Microsoft Manual of Style online if you do a search. It used to be available for free as a chm - afaik that hasn't changed. That's a decent place to start, especially if you're writing for products that work on Windows.

I believe Sun Microsystems had one available as well but I don't know if it was freely available.

[LTinker68]

Where can I look for guidance on the basics on writing a manual?

If you're going to be generating WebHelp, I recommend going to Nielsen Norman Group's website (http://www.nngroup.com/). They're kind of the front runner on web usability guidelines. Their website looks kind of simplistic compared to other sites you might go to, but they're all about building websites designed for the end user and the tasks they have to accomplish, and not about adding all the latest bells and whistles to websites. I attended a week-long seminar last month and the stuff on eyetracking is fascinating.

Their information isn't so much on how to create websites or use CSS, but they have some design tips you can implement in Flare.