Saturday, February 12, 2011

Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style PDF

Rating: (4 reviews) Author: ISBN : 9780415925518 New from $30.35 Format: PDF
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With this new edition, Science and Technical Writing confirms its position as the definitive style resource for thousands of established and aspiring technical writers. Editor Philip Rubens has fully revised and updated his popular 1992 edition, with full, authoritative coverage of the techniques and technologies that have revolutionized electronic communications over the past eight years.
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  • Series: Routledge Study Guides
  • Paperback: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (December 15, 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0415925517
  • ISBN-13: 978-0415925518
  • Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.9 x 8.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style PDF

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.

By Warren C. Norwood
The second edition of this text makes many useful changes to the previous edition. Hopefully, readers WILL peruse the Preface. On page 36 of that section, there is a FULL explanation of the location and summarizing techniques that make this text extremely usable.
Yes, each chapter does begin with a bulleted list that catalogs the major sub-sections in that specific chapter. Second, the Table of Contents offers page numbers to major topical changes. Third, the Index (compiled by a former president of the American Society of Indexers) references each paragraph in the text.
So, there are multiple ways to find specific pieces of information by using one of three major location techniques: topical changes in the toc, paragraph references in the index, and chapter level tocs at the beginning of each chapter. The latter are NOT, as one reviewer suggests, simply bulleted lists.
I'm happy to see this book issued as a Kindle book and hope others find it useful as an addition to their professional library.
By Padraig Cundelan

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