As a technical writer, I have progressively been led to, hand-held, encouraged, and brainwashed to believe in the Style Guide as the Holy Grail. I was told that periodic sippings from the Grail was both the cure for all my writing ills and the perfect diet to improve my writing health.

While I admit I’m given a bit to hyperbole, I have Emerson’s dictum about excesses and defects imprinted in my mind to actually implement my threat of unleashing unnecessary embellishment.

Thus, I actually think that a style guide is good.

But it is still a guide. It throws light on the path, it is not in itself the path. And which is where I narrate how I transformed my awe into a smile.

Without sounding too bitchy, pompous, or patronizing, I had this ex-colleague who fed on a diet of style guides. Microsoft Style for Technical Publications, Chicago Manual of Style, Sun whatisitcalled, Yale Style Manual, and assorted tomes gave this gentle soul the necessary proteins, carbs, starch, and fiber while I steadily grew weaker watching from the sidelines with open-mouthed awe. I realized painfully much later that this soul was learning to write using style guides. That cured me of the mindless affliction of over-reliance on style guides. It is like trying to learn how to solve a mathematical problem by referring to logarithmic tables.

At best a Style Guide gives you hints at proper usage, and dos and don’ts. All necessary, useful, and valuable. But it can’t predict the errors you might commit in your writing. That is your own burden and your own responsibility to lighten. And that task becomes easier if you read both widely and deeply, and read masters of prose, and practice.

While I’m still on the subject, do read the Economist’s Style Guide. It’s online, it’s free and contains plenty of sane advice. I specifically recommend memorizing the entire sections on tone and unnecessary words.

Best of all, read Hemingway.

Tags: Style Guide, Writing Advice, Language, Writing Well, Prose