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Rating: 
Summary: just view the excerpt
Review: I encourage you to view the excerpt of this book; it will help you, more than any customer review, to see if this book is what you expect or imagine. I found in the excerpt that chapter 2 starts with a bulleted list of items, without any introduction, any motivation, any explanation, nor comment. Next, using the same style (just displaying a list of bulleted items), "develops" each item of the bulleted list. I feel that this type of book would not give me any help to write anything; it would be useless for me.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the four essential books for the technical writer
Review: This is the best style guide for technical writing I have ever found. It gives more every day practical information than any of the other technical writing books and gives that information in a highly usable format.My only complaint--my standard complaint about my reference books--is that the index is far less comprehensive than it ought to be. Given modern computer indexing capabilities, one would think authors and publishers could do a better job. However, with this is one of the four essential books: 1. Strunk and White, Elements of Style, 2. Prentice Hall, Words Into Type, 3. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (for the British tech writer, Fowler's Modern English Usage) and 4. Ruebens, Science and Technical Writing. With these four, a technical writer can handle almost any situation that arises. There are other books covering special fields that can be added, but these four will always be the bedrock. If you are a professional technical writer or only an occasional one, you can't go wrong having this book handy on your desktop.
Rating:
Summary: One of the four essential books for the technical writer
Review: This is the best style guide for technical writing I have ever found. It gives more every day practical information than any of the other technical writing books and gives that information in a highly usable format. My only complaint--my standard complaint about my reference books--is that the index is far less comprehensive than it ought to be. Given modern computer indexing capabilities, one would think authors and publishers could do a better job. However, with this is one of the four essential books: 1. Strunk and White, Elements of Style, 2. Prentice Hall, Words Into Type, 3. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (for the British tech writer, Fowler's Modern English Usage) and 4. Ruebens, Science and Technical Writing. With these four, a technical writer can handle almost any situation that arises. There are other books covering special fields that can be added, but these four will always be the bedrock. If you are a professional technical writer or only an occasional one, you can't go wrong having this book handy on your desktop.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful
Review: While Robert A. Day's How to Write & Publish a Scientific Paper gives a good overview of the writing and publishing process on a macro level regarding organization and presentation of material, Science and Technical Writing provides great detailed advice on a micro level. Philip Rubens gives very clear instruction on paragraphing, grammar, punctuation and spelling as well as the intricacies of how to present numbers, mathematical symbols and scientific notation. In addition, there are illustrated guidelines on how to design a variety documents such as brochures, manuals and newsletters right down to the page-level including representing information in charts, tables and diagrams. The book itself is well-designed and well-organized giving testament to its own advice. This is a good general reference for both writers and editors of science and technical documentation.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful
Review: While Robert A. Day's How to Write & Publish a Scientific Paper gives a good overview of the writing and publishing process on a macro level regarding organization and presentation of material, Science and Technical Writing provides great detailed advice on a micro level. Philip Rubens gives very clear instruction on paragraphing, grammar, punctuation and spelling as well as the intricacies of how to present numbers, mathematical symbols and scientific notation. In addition, there are illustrated guidelines on how to design a variety documents such as brochures, manuals and newsletters right down to the page-level including representing information in charts, tables and diagrams. The book itself is well-designed and well-organized giving testament to its own advice. This is a good general reference for both writers and editors of science and technical documentation.
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