Hello Andrew, All
In ODF Authors site, you can get the writing style guide in
Home / LibreOffice / English / Resources for Contributors / Ch5 Style
Guide
I think it worth to all authors to follow it.
Exerpt:
Writing style
The following list summarizes our preferred writing style. Some of these
points are discussed in more detail in the tips for writers, reviews,
and editors starting on page 6.
* Use short, simple, easy-to-understand words and sentences. Be concise
and clear.
* Write in active voice, using passive voice only when necessary or
appropriate. A case of appropriate passive voice is when the focus of
the sentence is on the receiver of an action whose doer is obvious or is
not important. For example, The File dialog box is displayed is OK.
* Use the present tense, using future tense only when necessary or
appropriate. Try to make your descriptions timeless. For example, write
The File dialog box is displayed, rather than The File dialog box will
be displayed. Use future tense only when one event is necessarily later
than another. For example, If you use styles, your documents will be
easier to maintain.
* Avoid over-using you. For example, instead of saying if you want to
have table headers repeat on a new page, you need to do yyy, say to have
table headers repeat..., do yyy.
* When appropriate (as in instructions), use the imperative mood. For
example, instead of you should not use slang, say do not use slang.
* In circumstances where the only alternative to you is the passive
voice, use you. For example, instead of in this window xxx can be done,
say in this window you can do xxx.
* Use gender-neutral language, but don’t use awkward phrases like he or
she to do so. See page 8 for some examples.
Variations of English
For consistency, when writing the user guides we are following US
English spelling conventions and UK English punctuation conventions.
See also “Punctuation” on page 6.
You can use other spelling or punctuation conventions when writing other
documents.
Regards
Olivier