Writing Conventions

How Consistent Language Speaks of a Unified Organization

Do you capitalize every first word in a bulleted list? Does the graphic title go on top or underneath?

Technical writers and editors recognize that writing practices such as capitalization and graphic titling may vary widely within a company depending on group and author preferences. Similarly, many terms, initialisms, and measurement expressions are written in multiple ways in open literature and draft engineering documentation.

Sometimes published style guides fail to rule on such issues, or worse, blandly state that two or more choices are acceptable.
It’s in your interest to cut the chaos and get everyone in line – gently – with a writing convention guide.

What are Writing Conventions?

A writing convention is a general agreement on or acceptance of a particular writing practice; a usage, format, spelling, acronym, etc. that an organization accepts as true or correct.

Application of a set of writing conventions leads to a standardized product among numerous authors. When adopted for all customer (and even internal) correspondence and documentation, conventions truly help promote the clearest, most effective communication outside your department and with customers.

How can TE Make Conventions Work for Me?

Before starting any project for you, our writers need to establish the “rules of the page.” We’ll ask for any current convention listing you may have, or if you don’t have one, request a representative cross-section of your documents and create our own “starter” list to ensure continuity with the good work your customers have already seen.

TE can carry the good idea further by producing a writing convention guide for your business, or a more comprehensive writer’s guide. We will study your documentation to identify and catalog best practices and combine them with our own recommendations. We’ll help you develop sensible formatting rules and select one way of writing those “chameleon” terms that is prevalent in your industry and deemed correct by standards bodies and modern reference manuals.

The logic of our approach is uncontestable – writing convention guidelines are a staple of any serious corporate technical publications group operating today.

Target areas for convention development may include:

• Capitalization
• Abbreviations, acronyms and trademarks
• Graphic presentation and titling
• Reference usage and listing
• Numerical and unit conventions
• Others specific to your business

Your field’s terminology may be broad and complex enough to merit a complete “writing convention glossary” listing preferred verbiage from A to Z, a task that TextEngineer can accomplish expertly when asked.

The Payoff – You’re Synchronized and Disciplined in the Customer’s Eyes

Company-wide convention use establishes a uniform presentation by eliminating the plethora of individual variations that are inevitable when dealing with a large number of authors, in favor of “one voice” consistency as exemplified at leading companies in every field.

Adherence to the writing conventions TE helps you develop will lead to greater document consistency across your organization, fewer editorial complaints from customers, and better overall quality. Your customers (and competitors) will assuredly take notice.