The Digital Style Guide

"The Digital Style Guide," published in 1993 by Digital Equipment Corporation, is a comprehensive style manual designed for creating technical user information. Authored by Susan I. Schultz, Jennifer J. Darrow, Frank X. Kavanagh, and Marjorie J. Morse, it was developed by a team of experts to serve as a single, authoritative source for style guidelines.

The primary purpose of this guide is to ensure consistency in style, organization, and terminology across all technical documentation produced within Digital's distributed and heterogeneous environment, and with its third-party partners and customers, particularly in the context of open systems and shared information. It also addresses considerations for internationalization and multiplatform documentation.

The document is structured into three main parts:

• Part I: Overview of Basic Style Elements — Summarizes fundamental principles of good technical writing, covering how to organize information clearly, create readable sentences, and choose effective words.
• Part II: Style Elements from A to Z — Provides detailed, alphabetically arranged guidelines on various style topics, including grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and general usage.
• Part III: Quick Word Lookup — Functions as a concise dictionary and reference for symbols, abbreviations, acronyms, and specific technical terms frequently used in Digital's documentation, often including usage notes and cross-references to Part II for more detail.