Read Me First! a Style Guide for the Computer Industry

By Sun Technical Publications

Book Overview

The must-have reference for every technical writer, editor, and documentation manager. Circle-I stands for information, and Read Me First provides all the information you need if you face the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0137058268
• ISBN13: 9780137058266
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 462 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive Style Guide for Software Documentation

This is a great book that tackles every aspect of software documentation with enough detail to get you started. Read Me First gives the push you need to begin laying down your own styles. It also reviews some basic grammatical issues that you as a Technical Writer must be aware of. I would recommend using several style guides if your company doesn't already have one. The Microsoft Style Guide is another great reference to consider. I gave this book 5 stars because of its easy to read format.

A good book gets even better in 2nd edition

The first edition of this style guide was good, especially if you wanted an alternative to the Microsoft Manual of Style, but this edition is even better. It covers a wider range of issues (for example, adding much information about writing online material), and covers them very well. In fact, the book goes a bit beyond style in an appendix on developing a publications department, but the topics covered are certainly relevant and valuable, so I'm glad they were included. I don't always agree with the style choices, but that's irrelevant; I've never seen any style guide I completely agree with. Overall, I'm so impressed with this book, I'm likely to use it as a textbook for teaching technical editors. As you can tell, I'm giving it the "highly recommended" stamp.

Super Reference Book, with one small flaw!

I can't say enough good things about the information presented in this book - it has become a primary reference for me in all of my technical writing. I also use the Mcrosoft Sytle guide in conjunction with this book and find that the two balance each other very well. The one flaw with this book is -- as noted by another reviewer -- the CD. Frame Viewer is a product from the original authors of FrameMaker and, quite frankly, it's old! Also -- and this is most significant -- the files are .doc files, created with an older version of Frame. I found the best solution was to copy the .doc files into a separate folder, then open them directly with FM 5.5.6. The automatic conversion is performed and you can then save them as .fm files and even generate a pdf for personal ease-of-use.

Great content and FrameMaker templates as a bonus!

This book quickly won out over the MS Manual of Style as ourprimary style reference for its content, organisation and departurefrom the MS way of living life.As I read the other reviews, I think many readers don't realise that this type of book is a guide, a "getting started" reference, to help your tech pubs department develop its own customised style guide. We have taken the best ideas here, the best ideas from Digital and the best ideas from MS, and have created a style manual for our particular business, geared to the educational level and computer experience of our customers. Read Me First! contributed more ideas than the other books because it has a broader world view. The MS manual assumes that the reader is planning to work at MS doing MS-distributed documents.As a bonus, Read Me First! includes a CD-ROM with the FrameMaker templates used to construct the book. This was a great boon to our company. We were just converting from MS Weird to FrameMaker and were considering contractors to build templates for us. Instead, we saved money and time by not having to start at ground level. We were able to tweak the templates and get the results we needed in a very short time. We are eagerly awaiting an update to this manual to see what other great ideas they've come up with since the first printing.

Excellent guidelines for indexing technical manuals.

This review will focus only on Chapter 9, Indexing. In my previous life, I was a technical writer. For the past 6 years, I have been a freelance professional indexer, dividing my time between indexing computer books and delivering indexing workshops for technical writers. I am delighted to see a book for technical writers that contains such excellent guidelines for indexing technical manuals. As the introduction to Chapter 9 alludes, indexes enhance product usability. In addition to affecting customers' perceptions of the product, indexes affect customers' perceptions of the developer's credibility. One of the biggest complaints end users of technical manuals have is the inability to find the information they need. If technical writers apply the guidelines in this Chapter, they will avoid some of the most common indexing pitfalls. Some of the best guidelines help writers develop concise, specific index entries and enhance the index by double-posting entries, using meaningful cross-references, finding the right balance (not over-indexing or under-indexing), and editing the index.