Government & Business Correspondence: Course Resources

Here are various resources you might find useful in this course. Please contact your instructor if you find any additional ones that ought to be posted here. Thanks!

Electronic Editing

Microsoft Word tutorials. Tutorials for both styles and track changes available.

Understanding Styles. From Microsoft Word Legal User's Guide.

Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word.

Track changes. Produced by Shauna Kelly, Microsoft MVP for Word, Melbourne, Australia. (Includes tutorials on styles.)

Grammar, Usage, Punctuation

• Bedford-St. Martin companion website. Lots of diagnostics and exercises for gramma, usage, punctuation.
• Merriam-Webster Online
• Common Errors in English. Provided by Paul Brians, Washington State University.
• Sentence diagnostic
• Guide to Grammar and Writing. Provided by Charles Darling at Capital Community College.
• Reference Guide to Grammar: A Handbook of English as a Second Language
• Guide to Grammar and Style. Made available by Jack Lynch.
• Grammar & Usage Study Guides. From David McMurrey.

Plain English

• Plain English Handbook. From the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
• Plain English Campaign in England. From the founders of the movement.
• Plain Language Action Network (PLAN) . A government-wide group working to improve federal government communications established by the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) established PLAN and uided by Plain English Network (PEN). (But now we need a movement to wipe out acronyms!)
• Plain Language Online Training. From Human Resources Development Canada.

Reference Materials

• One Look Dictionaries
• National Institutes of Standards and Technology
• alt.usage.english FAQ
• WWWebster Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition
• Common Proofreading Symbols

General Resources

• CMO FAQ. Great stuff from the Chicago Manual of Style people.
• INTECOM. Excellent collection of links and resources, including style guides and much more at INTECOM.
• PainintheEnglish.com. A forum for the "gray areas" of the English language.
• . TIPS@TechnicalPublishing.com offers a copyeditor/proofreader quiz plus wise advice.
• EServer TC Library. A huge esource with many categories including editing and style guides.
• INTECOM.ORG. Links of interest for Technical Communicators.
• Technical Editors' Eyrie. Resources for technical editors made available by Jean Weber. More than a dozen articles and many aspects of technical editing, including finding telecommuting work.
• Electronic editing: Editing in the computer age. Jean Weber's downloadable book.
• Editing Online Help. Jean Weber's downloadable book for students, writers, and editors who are developing online help for computer software.
• Technical Editing: Overview. Presented by Rajan D V in Bangalore, India, July 2003.
• Textbook resources. Companion website for Carolyn Rude's Technical Editing, 3rd edition.
• Indexing Evaluation Checklist. Made available by the American Society of Indexers.
• Van Buren, Robert & Mary Fran Buehler. Levels of Edit Scanned and formatted for PDF by Michael Parcher at Austin Community College.
• Levels of Edit Chart. From Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• Technical Communications Resources on the World Wide Web. Developed by Teresa Ashley at Austin Community College. (Be sure and check the New Book List link.)
• TechCommunity. Technical communicators' resources including teaching, studying, and practicing as well as news.
• Internet Resources for Technical Communicators
• The Slot: copyeditor site, including the The Curmudgeon's Style Book.
• STC Technical Editing SIG
• Suite101.com: Technical Writing and Editing
• Suite101.com: Editing Links
• Links for Copy Editors. From Copy Editor magazine.
• Editing: The Rant File. Essays on editing from Telperion Productions.
• Proofreading Strategies. From the Purdue University Writing Lab.
• Usability Methods Toolbox. Interesting information and research on usability of web pages.
• useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website

Style Guides

Thanks to Janet Swisher for finding so many of the following:

• IBM Ease of Use-Style Guidelines.
• Developing a Departmental Style Guide. Made available by Jean Hollis Weber.
• OpenOffice.org Authors Style Guide. Developed by Janet Swisher for an international community of volunteer authors; requires OpenOffice.org.
• US Government Printing Office Style Guide.
• Scriptorium Style Guide.
• American Institute of Physics Style Manual.
• European Union Interinstitutional style guide.
• IEEE Standards Style Manual.
• IEEE Computer Society Style Guide.
• Gnome Documentation Style Guide.
• Apple Publications Style Guide.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style.
• Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications. Used to be available free as a 1077KB help file (.chm).
• Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry. Unfortunately, this fine book by Sun Technical Publications you must purchase. Sun Technical Publications: Mountain View, CA. Second edition, 384 pages. ISBN 0-13-142899-3.
• Rand Style Guide
• Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina
• SpectrLink Corporate Style Guide
• Style-guide project. An assignment to create a style guide, used in some versions of this course.
• Examples:
  • Oil Accounting's Documentation Standards
  • User Help System Design Standards
  • ABC, Inc., Writing Style Guide
• Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors: Grammar, Punctuation, and Capitalization. NASA publication, produced by Mary K. McCaskill at the Langley Research Center.
• CERN Style Guide for Online Hypertext. From the founders of the web . . .
• The Yale Web Style Guide. Fine material from the Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media.

Information and programs provided by hcexres@io.com.