Read Me First A Style Guide for the Computer Industry

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Summary: Super Reference Book, with one small flaw!
Review: 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.

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Summary: A good book gets even better in 2nd edition
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent source for developing a concise style guide.
Review: There's a lot of great information in this book. When you're starting from nothing to develop a style guide, it's a great resource. So much of what we do when creating technical documentation is done as a matter of practice. Getting the structure down and having this book to jog our memory was fantastic.

One improvement would be to include a section on layout and design.

I liked the formulas for calculating hours found under Recommended Reading. Good information about developing a publications department, too. Nice overview for constructing a document plan.

This is definately a book for people who do not have an established publication/documentation department. There's lots of great information found in the 256 pages.

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Summary: Great content and FrameMaker templates as a bonus!
Review: 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.

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Summary: Super Reference Book for Creating a Company Writing Style
Review: This is an excellent book to read if you are in the position of having to create any kind of writing style guides for the company you work for. The book's sections include one on writing style itself and why it is important, working with an editor, working wit illustrations, writing for an international audience, legal guidelines, the "mechanics of writing," creating an index, among others. The book makes some good points and provides an informative reference for writing style questions.

Two small points against it. The CD is difficult at times to use and the Recommended Reading section lists some books that are out of print. Time for an update perhaps?

However, it's still an excellent book to have when having to make decisions about your own company's writing style. When I had to write a Writing Style Guide as a class assignment, this book was one of the ones I used as a reference.