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...actually, so far as I know, one does not have stylistic freedom in using single or double quotes as one pleases. (Not in prose, anyway — all bets are off in poetry.) In American English, dialog...
Not overkill at all. However, the Chicago Manual of Style is not really ideal for technical writing (and is intended as a look-it-up reference, not a cover-to-cover read). It is a good guide to gen...
(I'm answering this from a point-of-view of readability. If your corporate communications are subject to any internal style sheets or style guide such as AP or Chicago - since you have a policy on ...
Punctuation marks where invented to increase readability. So for God's sake, get rid of these semi-colons; my eyes are bleeding. If you really need the differentiation which shall be achieved with...
Use this one (without the semicolons): James T. Smith, vice president of widgets at WidgetCo, Mary Holmes, chief foo officer at FoobRUs, Sheldon DeVane, head of global placeholding at RiMelioraDie...
I don't think following a style guide is overkill. It's really helpful to have an authoritative answer to things like whether to use e-mail or email and not have to look them up a dozen times or ar...
There's no rule; it's all by ear. Write it however it seems to work at the time, put it aside for a week and reread it, and then have a friend review it to see if it works. The goal is that the re...
No, it is not overkill to follow a stylebook. As others have said, you consult it as questions arise and learn as you go; you normally don't read it cover to cover. We all put sticky notes on the o...
First off, if you're writing for the government they might have a format they expect, so if so and it says something on this point, it wins. Otherwise, I would not use colons in any of your titles...
I think you are confusing a style guide with a manual of style. The Chicago Manual of Style will help, but is more of a reference book of best practices, rather than a set of policies and procedur...
If the documentation is only ever going to be written by one person, and read by the same group of people, that documentation does not require a style (assuming it is internal documentation, not go...
I would say that you do not need colons with your subheadings (the headings above your sub-ideas).
You can use past or present tense but it depends on the author's purpose. In a diary, if someone will read it, use present tense to make the reader feel like are in the same situation. Otherwise, i...
It's all about context. I don't think there's a blanket answer. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is, in a sense, a flashback in the middle of the story, but it works exquisitely.
Well, chronological is always a useful way of telling this sort of story, but it might not be the most engaging. As strange as it sounds, even a biography has to have a story. Sometimes the best wa...
The rules in place are to help writers overcome hesitation to write, or indecision on how to structure the story. Others will give you rules to follow, and as a result you try to club it into submi...
There is no harm in using italic but if you want to specifically emphasize on any word making it bold would have a better impact. I feel using italics makes it a little informal.
I've read a lot of novels in my life and I cannot remember one, that uses bold for emphasizing. But maybe that's just my memory problem. I prefer italic, but honestly, that is a matter of taste and...
...it looks rude? I have never heard of italics being called "rude." Your friend is full of it. Both your examples are perfect exactly as they are. The first one is a brief interior monologue, se...
If you feel like your plot elements show too much of the author's deus ex machina, then go back and figure out a way to make them more organic. Sometimes this may mean backing up several scenes, ...
If I think a new event or occurrence might be too unbelievable, I might have my protagonist express and work through the same doubts. Instead of skimming over the incredible coincidence, I would em...
Several good answers and I don't want to repeat what they said, but let me add: I think you can almost always get away with ONE coincidence that gets the story rolling. Like suppose the story begi...
I worked with a friend on what basically amounted to story-telling in a shared world, but which out of necessity also involved quite a lot of world exploration and some building, because the charac...
You'll need to contact the original author and/or their publisher. Either one will direct you to the correct person to deal with - there's no blanket rule over who has which rights, so you'll need ...
One important aspect of naming creatures is onomatopoeia and ideophone - the name should give an impression of what the creature is. For example: A buruk can sound like a large, powerful, lumber...
