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Company Writer's Guide
SECTION 1
STYLE GUIDE
This section of the Writer’s Guide is intended to establish a basic writing style that is clear, concise,
and consistent in presentation of information. Technical information requires more stringent
standardization than is common in general usage. Therefore, generating a deliverable to
accommodate an expeditious technical review requires avoiding confusing or amb
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Company Writer's Guide Table 1.1-1. Examples of Wordiness Verbose-ese Equivalent by means of by connect together connect, join consider all factors carefully consider due to the fact that because for the purpose of for, to furthermore it would seem and give proper consideration to consider has a tendency to tends in addition to also initiate action start in order to to in spite of the fact that though/although in the case in which when in the event that if in this instance, h
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Company Writer's Guide 3. Make sure that your graphics clearly support information in the text. Have you chosen the most illustrative graphics in each section? Is there a difficult passage of text that you could elucidate with a figure? Verb Tenses As a general rule, use the present tense. For example, “our design includes” (not “will include” or “included”); “our Project Team is ready” (not “will be ready”). However, use future tense when describing project activities still to be per
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Company Writer's Guide 3. Be assertive in your writing. Examples include: • Use “will” not “may,” “plan to,” or “would.” Use “plan” only as a noun or in the strict sense of planning and scheduling. • Use “shall” only in discussing project or regulatory requirements. • Use “ensure,” not “insure.” “Assure” is not as forceful as “ensure.” However, use “assure” in quality assurance discussions. 4. Avoid a tutorial writing style. “First one must . . . then one does . . . and after these s
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Company Writer's Guide In text, use the word form of common abbreviations such as percent, degree, number, equal to, plus, minus, less than, greater than, and the like. Symbols should be used in the following cases: • For temperatures given with a numerical value, use the degree symbol (32°C, etc.). • For equations, either written in-line with the text or displayed (standing alone), use symbols. • In graphics (figures and tables), use symbols if space is a problem. The use of symbols in
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Company Writer's Guide 1.3 PUNCTUATION 1 Standard rules of English (as defined by Strunk and White ) for grammar and punctuation should be used. Avoid long sentences; use semicolons (;) only in short sentences. Also, avoid using contractions because they often cause confusion. Use the final comma in a series (e.g., apples, oranges, and pears). Place periods after the following: • Sentences • Between heading digits (e.g., 1.1.1) and after lower-level step letters and numbers (e.g., a.,
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Company Writer's Guide Capitalize all letters in each of the following: • Main section headings • Acronyms, initialisms Do not capitalize: • Generic product and component names (for example, controller, panel, switch) • Generic system names • Acronym definitions (unless they belong in the above initial-cap group) Capitalize the first letter of Government, Division, Plant, Project, etc., when referring to a specific one. Use lower case when it is only a general reference. 1.5 NUMERALS
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Company Writer's Guide When a spelled-out unit of measurement is used with a quantity, use the singular or plural form of the unit of measurement based on the following criteria: • If the quantity is the unit 1 or a fraction of 1, use the singular form of the spelled-out unit of measurement. Examples: — 0.6 meter — 1/32 inch — 1 second • If the quantity is zero or more than the unit 1, use the plural form of the spelled-out unit of measurement. Examples: — 0 inches — 1.6 meters — 3
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Company Writer's Guide When listing project-specific documents, follow this example. Document number, ABC Project, “XYZ System General Requirements,” Business Unit, date. Note It is not necessary to give the revision level of project documents unless there is a specific reason to cite an earlier revision. The most recent revision at the time of issuance applies. 2. For standards and regulatory guidance, the form is number, title in quotes, revision (if applicable), issuing body, and da
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Company Writer's Guide 5. The ordering of documents in the reference list should correspond to the sequence of references used in the document, so that Reference 1 is the first one used, 2 the second, and so on. 6. Reference callouts may be of two types. “This methodology is explained thoroughly in Reference 7…” OR “As was concluded in the Recorder Review (Ref. 2),…” 1.7 GRAPHICS Figures, tables, photos, and charts are all considered graphics. Figures, photos, and charts will be ass
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Company Writer's Guide AC deadman air flow deadweight Alloy 750 decision-making (um) around-the-clock (um) decision-set (um) ASME Code de-energize B.S., M.S. diesel-generator (um) backfit double check (v, n, um) backflow driveline backlit E-C (engineer-constructor) backpressure electromechanical backup e-mail best-estimate (um) employee boil-off (n, um) ensure (not insure) break-even (um) entry level Btu Environmental, Safety, and Health buildup ES and H built-in (um) et al. b
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Company Writer's Guide hard-copy (um) low-pressure (um) hard-face (um) makeup hard rock (um) make-or-buy (um) hard-wired man-hours heatup (um) manway high-build (um) mid-size (um) high-energy (um) mockup high-level (um) multicompany hold-down (um) multimillion holdup Navy hot-dip (um) nil-ductility human-factor (um) no-load (um) in-depth (um) non-Class 1E in-flow (um) non-conformance in-house (um) non-exempt in-leakage (um) non-process in-service (um) offeror inside diameter of
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Company Writer's Guide post-heat time-out post-test Title II preheat topcoat preoperational trade-off (n, um) pre-procurement two-dimensional (um) pre-service (um) Type 304 proactive Type A pushbutton U.S. (um) read-out (n, um) unisolatable real-time (um) United States (n) record-keeping (um) up-front (um) remote-handled (um) VAC roundtable VDC self-sufficient (um) versus set point videodisk shear wave (um) videotape shutdown walkdown sign-off (n, um) warmup socioeconomic wate
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Company Writer's Guide APPENDIX A COMMONLY USED TRADEMARKS The first use of a trademark name should include “®” or “™” as appropriate. The following are the most often-used trademarks in our business as they should appear under “Acronyms and Trademarks” in the front matter. [“Adobe” and “the Adobe logo” first, if used, followed by other Adobe marks used in alphabetical order] are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other
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Company Writer's Guide Netscape and the Netscape N and Ship's Wheel logos are registered trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation in the U. S. and other countries. [List other Netscape product names used in your document] are also trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation and may be registered outside the U.S. Oracle® is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Primavera Project Planner® is a registered trademark of Primavera Systems, Incorporated. SAP/R3™ is a trad
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Company Writer's Guide APPENDIX B ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS Abbreviations facilitate reading and minimize dull repetition of cumbersome names. Abbreviations should be used only when necessary and when their meanings are unquestionably clear. When in doubt, spell it out. In the text, capitalization will agree with the parent word. Rules of capitalization apply. The same abbreviation should be used for all tenses, possessive, singular, and plural. A sentence should never begin with a
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Company Writer's Guide 4. When using unit abbreviations such as Btu, kW, Hz. . . a space should be placed between the number and the abbreviation. e.g.; 100 Btu, 3 kW, 50 Hz. 5. Refrain from using the symbols " and ' for inches and feet unless referring to a plant elevation or when it is necessary to save space (i.e., within tables, forms, etc.). However, use inches and feet in their proper forms as follows: 0.5 inch of space around the margin (singular) 2 inches in diameter (plural) a
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Company Writer's Guide 3. Abbreviations with periods, lower-case letters used as nouns, and capital letters that would form another word if “s” alone were added form the plural with an apostrophe and an “s”: Ph.D.’s x’s and y’s S’s, A’s, I’s Letter Symbols for Units of Measurement The following pages are taken from Corporate Standards. These abbreviations should be the only ones used unless stated otherwise in a project-specific document. [For Illustration Only] B-3
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Company Writer's Guide Symbols for Units in General Use Unit Symbol Notes ampere A SI unit of electric current. ampere (turn) A SI unit of magnetomotive force. ampere-hour Ah Also A�h ampere per meter A/m SI unit of magnetic field strength. -10 angstrom 1 Δ = 10 m (deprecated, see ANSI Z210.1-1976) Δ atmosphere, standard atm 1 atm = 101 325 Pa (deprecated, see ANSI Z210.1- 1976) 2 atmosphere, technical at 1 at = 1 kgf/cm (deprecated, see ANSI Z210.1-1976) atomic mass unit (unified)
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Company Writer's Guide Symbols for Units in General Use (Cont’d) Unit Symbol Notes bel B becquerel Bq SI unit of activity of a radionuclide. billion electronvolts GeV The name gigaelectronvolt is preferred for this unit. bit b In information theory, the bit is a unit of information content equal to the information content of a message the a priori probability of which is one half. In computer science, the bit is a unit of storage capacity. The capacity, in bits, of a storage
