[FM Discuss] Style Guide?

[Andy Oram]

We have the philosophy of "if you care for something, go for it," so I encourage you to do some work on a style guide--maybe not a comprehensive one. In my professional work as an editor, I find some authors who just ignore everything you ask them to do, but others who show great concern for getting the format right--sometimes almost obsessively.

So there will be some people who use your guide, and as you've said, it will be useful for maintenance.

I was asked to develop some style notes for the Command-Line book, and I expanded them for the book about Book Sprints. I suggest you look at the Writing Conventions page for that book, which is available on the "WRITE" tab of FLOSS Manuals:

http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/BookSprints/WritingConventions

I don't think anybody has developed the writing conventions further than this. It's nowhere near as detailed as what you're looking to do, but I urge you to start with it.

Andy