The biggest news in PerfectIt 6 (at least for style manual geeks like us) is the launch of the Microsoft Writing Style Guide in PerfectIt together with the update for The Chicago Manual of Style, 18^th Edition. We have an entirely separate article about the improvements to PerfectIt styles here. But that’s just the beginning! There’s so much more packed into this new release! We’ve worked hard to add something for everyone.

We partnered with Microsoft to introduce the Microsoft Writing Style Guide in PerfectIt. It’s available to all users in Perfect 6 and PerfectIt Cloud at no additional cost. 

And that’s not the only new style manual included in our new release! PerfectIt 6 now includes The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition. CMOS Online Subscribers get access to rule changes and revisions with the upgrade to PerfectIt 6. 

Here are some of the biggest additions, revisions, and fine-tuning that we’ve undertaken over the last few months to bring PerfectIt up to date with the release of the 18th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

The first thing you need for truly great corporate documents is a truly great style guide. Knowing it all off the top of your head is not good enough. You’re not the only person handling the text and you may leave the company someday. More importantly, no human can ever be one hundred percent consistent.

If your goal is to get everyone in your organization or group to follow your house style—and to learn the principles behind it—there’s more to it than simply adding terms and adjusting settings in the Style Sheet Editor. The exact words you use to describe the issue make a difference.

Italics are like fancy dress for words. Seeing a word in italics is like going into your local grocery store and seeing someone working there in a samurai costume. “Well,” you think, “you’re certainly here to tell me something.”

It’s important to get a PLS right. When done well, these summaries can improve health literacy in the general public and encourage the pharmaceutical companies that sponsor clinical research to operate more transparently. These eight hacks, adapted from tips by the Plain Language Association International and The Center for Plain Language, will help you master your next PLS.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on the World Health Organization (WHO), an intergovernmental organization that works worldwide to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. As part of their work, WHO publishes a range of documents, from international health standards, to “situation reports” describing progress in fighting a disease, to advice for the public on staying safe and healthy.

Military writing is not just instruction manuals. It includes official correspondence, reports, academic writing projects, contracts, blog posts, press articles and many other genres. The U.S. Army alone lists over forty kinds of official army publications. As technical writers, we can learn a great deal from military style rules. But we also need to understand when and how to deviate from them, to have the right effect.

With 193 member states, the United Nations could probably have 193 different style guides. Fortunately, the organization has settled on just one United Nations Editorial Manual. The comprehensive online guide includes style suggestions for everything from acronyms to numbering of maps and figures.

If you’re a technical writer, you’re used to handling tricky topics. Maybe you’re teaching system administrators how to set up a new IT platform. Or writing instructions for forklift operators. Or describing how to assemble a gas grill in a way that won’t cause married couples to immediately file for divorce.

The GPO Style Manual, last updated in 2016, is the official guide to the form and style of the U.S. Government Publishing Office. The electronic version is free to download. Although designed for use in Federal Government printing and publishing, the GPO Style Manual is relied upon by writers and editors both within and outside the Federal Government.

Bidding for large EU contracts may seem challenging. However, the process is easier than you think. Moreover, the focus on transparency can work to your advantage. Here’s what you need to understand. EU procurement laws state that contracts over certain values must be advertised through the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) to select the most economically advantageous bidder to deliver the contract.

The Microsoft Writing Style Guide is the go-to style for information technology (IT)–specific communications. The IT audience is large and varied, ranging from help desk staff to chief technology officers. The people that make up that audience come from all over the world and speak many different languages.

Editing has several “golden rules”—plus quite a lot of silver and bronze ones, too—but high on the list is the classic Golden Rule we were taught as children: Treat others as you would have them treat you. What this means, among other things, is take care not to use language that treats some people as intrinsically inferior. Use sensitive language: as inclusive, conscious, and unbiased as possible.

PerfectIt makes it easy to set up a unique style sheet for every client, journal, publishing house, or agency that you work with. However, clients have preferences that overlap; and you probably have some preferences that apply to all clients. So what’s the best way to organize styles in PerfectIt?

The new version of PerfectIt is a bigger deal than that “.1” suggests. As with any new software version, it has lots of small fixes and improvements. However, it has one huge new capability. For the first time, you can control exactly what PerfectIt checks. Now you can turn PerfectIt into a custom checker designed (by you) to lift writing standards at your organization.

Did you know? The first few days in a new job have a lasting impact on engagement, satisfaction and productivity. In order to get a new employee’s best work, your training materials must be effective, immersive, and flawless. This article shows how to make sure your training materials are the best they can be so that new employees at your organization get the best start possible.

American Legal Style is an option in PerfectIt that transforms it into one of the most powerful, yet nuanced, proofreading programs available today for legal professionals.

As a medical writer, your team depends on you to catch errors, large and small. It’s your job to make sure that months or even years of hard work on a regulatory submission, grant application, or research article aren’t undermined by small imperfections that make a bad impression and weaken your team’s credibility.