I apologize for adding even more discussion on this topic that I think has
had way more than it deserves. I would say that 99% of people reading our
documentation don't even notice, much less care, whether we use sentence style
capitalization or headline style capitalization.
For whatever my opinion counts, I would vote for sentence style
capitalization (easier for most people to "get right").
And for what it's worth, I happened to pay attention today for the first
time to what the daily newspaper in the city I live near uses for its headlines.
They use sentence style.
Dick, Webster, NY
In a message dated 12/8/2005 8:39:58 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
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
|
