Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
Now that I'm home again and have access to my reference library, I
pulled down a selection of books to see how software vendor manuals
and commercial computer-related books handle heading capitalisation,
and what my style guides say.
Several of my style guides and books on technical editing don't
mention the topic at all (other than to say "don't use ALL CAPS").
What are these style guides, and what style capitalization does each use?
My IBM style guide (1996) calls for sentence-style caps; no doubt my
10 years as a technical editor with IBM Australia influenced my
preference for that style.
This seems like a pretty obscure style guide. Can one buy this book? I
can't find it.
In contrast, "Read Me First" (2nd edition, 2003), from Sun Technical
Publications, calls for headline-style caps.
As does the Chicago Manual of Style. These are the first two style
guides cited in the
OOAuthors style guide. The third is a general reference to "MLA
guidelines", which
appear to me to focus on research papers and scholarly writing. I would
not include this
in the style guide, but in fact, they also use headline capitalization.
"Style manual for authors, editors and printers", 6th edition,
published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd in 2002, is the official
style manual for the Australian Government. It recommends minimalist
(sentence-type) capitalisation in all situations, including headings.
The book itself uses sentence-style caps for everything including the
titles of chapters and parts of the book -- except for the
second-level headings, which oddly are in ALL CAPS.
Again, pretty obscure. A search on Amazon comes up with:
"Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers", Australian Govt Pub
Service;
5th edition (March, 1997). Is the Wiley version available anywhere?
Most of the third-party computer books (from Que, O'Reilly, and
others) use headline-style caps for headings; one exception is
"Managing Your Documentation Projects" from Wiley Technical
Communication Library, 1993. I don't have many user guides that came
with software (mainly because most software doesn't ship with books
anymore), but among the ones I do have, the following use sentence
style caps for headings: Dreamweaver 4 (Macromedia), Quicken 6
(Intuit), and Acrobat 5 Classroom in a Book (Adobe).
None of this proves anything, other than that both heading styles are
in common use and each is recommended by different style guides.
My point was simply that headline style capitalization is much more common.
To me, the purpose of citing industry-standard style guides is to avoid
issues
like this.
I don't see what place a government style guide has in computer
documentation,
or a ten-year old IBM style guide for that matter.
I will admit that before I became aware of sentence-style
capitalization, I would
have sworn I did not have any books that used it. I would have been wrong.
Cheers, Jean
Final point: the OOo help system uses headline capitalization. Having
different style
in documentation for a single product seems wrong to me.
Best regards,
Lou Iorio
