Re: [style guide] Thoughts on approach

Voice and tone are very important and it is the lack of a conssitant voice
and tone that often makes EO documents so very hard to consume, creating
that "wall of text" that we need to avoid.

We need to get this right and to provide guidance that will support
consistency.  In most cases, I am all for brevity but since both Norah and
KrisAnne have asked for a style guide that includes voice and tone I think
we need to include those sections.

So, a brief intro, the sections for Voice, Tone, and Style and maybe the
Special Language - althought that is one I do notyet have content for.

I am OK with adding additional sections but these to me are a minimum and I
have content to begin them. I will proceed with those four and leave the
Special Language for further discussion since Brent supports it maybe he
can help.

On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org> wrote:

> Thanks for getting this going, Sharron!
>
> I think that we want this Style Guide to be as short and easy-to-consume
> as feasible. If so, we'll want to be thoughtful about what we include and
> what not to clutter it with. For example, maybe we don't need to include
> obvious things, and certainly we don't want to recreate general writing
> best practices.
>
> An example of a questionable item is: write out abbreviations on first
> reference. I'll start a separate thread on that point specifically...
>
> Another point is that we want this Style Guide to be for all of the WAI
> website, and for Understanding WCAG at least. For some aspects, we might
> have different styles for different types of resources/documents/pages.
>
> Thanks,
> ~Shawn
>
>
> On 6/30/2017 10:14 AM, Sharron Rush wrote:
>
>> I am thinking about how this will be presented and would like to suggest
>> this format.  Sarah and Shawn, if you agree I will format the wiki to
>> reflect these sections:
>>
>> *Introduction* – What the guide is meant to do, how it will make our job
>> easier, and how to use it.*
>>
>> Voice* – Can we make a statement about what we want the quality of the
>> voice to be? I am thinking about some of the adjectives we used to describe
>> how we wanted the web site to be.  Some words that will suggest rhythm, and
>> maybe a list of voice qualities to avoid. Each statement could then be
>> explained it in more detail and examples provided for how to put it into
>> practice*.
>>
>> Tone* – This seems a bit trickier and might entail how to use the voice
>> we agree on with different tones. There will be variation depending on
>> different scenarios, do you agree?  This may be a place to reference our
>> personas.
>>
>> *Style* – After introducing the guide and setting voice and tone, that's
>> when I think we get into the style guide items that Shawn and Annabelle
>> started and Sarah expanded on.
>>
>> *Specialist language* – Since this is a specialized filed, should we
>> include any guidance on how to reference disability, W3C process,
>> referencing materials or anything else that is super-specialized for our
>> environment?
>>
>> Throughout I strongly believe that we should use as many examples as
>> possible and be specific to our own stuff, as the first set of guides has
>> done. Is this an approach we can agree on? or have I overlooked or
>> misunderstood any of it? This is new to me so don't hesitate to let me know.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Sharron
>>
>> --
>> Sharron Rush | Executive Director | Knowbility.org | @knowbility
>> /Equal access to technology for people with disabilities/
>>
>
>


-- 
Sharron Rush | Executive Director | Knowbility.org | @knowbility
*Equal access to technology for people with disabilities*