| Okay, you've just spent the better part of the last 9 months meeting with various committees, pounding out drafts, getting approvals from every office under the sun, and just when you thought you had successfully negotiated this "treacherous" directives process and were heading down the home stretch, someone suggests that your directive should be edited.
You may not think your "baby" needs editing, but don't forget that journalists, novelists, college professors, company presidents, and even editors of DOE Headquarters directives ask to be edited. Why? Because if you have written something, a directive for example, and run it by a couple dozen reviewers, revised it, submitted it to still more reviewers, re-revised it, and generally tried to satisfy everyone, you need an objective advocate to find the errors, fractured sentences, formatting glitches, and other anomalies that may have crept into your document along the way.
Thomas Edison once said that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. The same can be said of writing. And this is another way that we hope we can help you produce better documents. Our job is to spend time on the naggy little details that can hold you up and that frequently are the difference between a successful, well understood document and one that is not. (And that is the end goal of all successful communication/writing: to be understood.) It's our job to be expert with grammar and writing glitches, as you are in your areas of expertise.
We'd also like to help you out along the way . . . not just at the end of your writing journey. To this end, we've created a number of online keys to smooth your way. Check out-
- Headers and Footers-the key to building and editing them, getting the numbering right, and keeping the Glitch away.
- Capitalization-what to capitalize (cap) and what not to cap in DOE directives.
- Title Caps-a list of position titles to cap/not cap.
Templates also are available with instructions, required text, and writing advice at the following links.
| Policy template |
| Order template |
| Manual template |
| Notice template |
| Guide template |
The American Heritage Book of English Usage, http://www.bartleby.com/64/
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, http://www.bartleby.com/68/.
The National Archives and Records Administration guide to creating user-friendly documents http://www.archives.giv/federal_register/drafting_legal_documents/.
Common Errors in English Usage, http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/errors.html, an online analog to a popular print publication, in an alphabetical list with short explanations of common errors (e.g., that famous bugaboo ensure/insure).
We hope you'll suggest additional problems you would like to see addressed through this site. And please feel free to e-mail us with your writing/editorial questions.
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