a little fine wordsmithing

I particularly liked this bit of editing I did that ended up in the datasheet for our new part. My edit describes more features, and helps make them more applicable to a user. It's a 50% increase in words, but I'd say it's a 100% feature increase, 100% information improvement, and 15% clarity improvement.
The result:

The built in, pipelined 8051 microcontroller, supported by the integrated development environment and source level debugging, provides enormous versatility. The 20Mhz clock rate, 16KB of code space, 8KB of SRAM, and MME integration library can handle sophisticated algorithms ported from Matlab or C. Three 16 bit timers and configurable GPIO ports can extend data buffering capability or tackle unforeseen issues. Woken by DRDY (data ready) interrupts from the VMC or ROC blocks, by its own timers, or from an external SPI/I2C command, the unit is only powered up when needed. If higher-order curve fitting and matrix/floating-point operations are unnecessary, the MCU never needs to be turned on at all.

The initial text:

An 8051 microcontroller (from CAST) is built-in and includes 16KB of FLASH memory, 20KB of SRAM, three 16 bit timers, and ~8 GPIO ports (actual number is TBD). The unit is only powered up upon request, as the state machines handle most transactions, however the MCU is necessary for higher-order curve fitting and matrix/floating-point operations. The MCU can be woken by DRDY (data ready) interrupts from the VMC or ROC.

Judicious Editing

I was rather proud of this edit to a co-worker's document which improved flow with a minimum of additional words and little alteration of the actual text.

"For a random read the most common action is reading the corresponding shadow register. That being the case its function pointer is assigned a NULL pointer. A NULL tells the code to return the value of the shadow register array indexed by the command."
Changed to
"The Random Read command's most common action is to read the corresponding shadow register, so its function pointer is assigned a NULL, which tells the code to return the value of the shadow register array indexed by the command."

Wikipedia- great style guide

Wikipedia has several well put articals on writing style. I particularly like the weasel words artical

Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

to really split hairs

I've never had much of a head for grammar, but I do have a strong appreciation for good writing.

I was reading a writing tips sheet for school which said to "Rely on a standard American English writing style guide...", however it further advised to not bow to the dictator of style if it meant sacrificing clarity and utility. In an offhand way the sheet mentioned the split infinitive and hanging preposition as if everyone should be familiar with these middling grammatical transgressions.

I wasn't. Though now than I am, I'm not sure I'm any better for it.

Split infinitive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Preposition Stranding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Disputed English Grammar- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seven Steps to Better Presentations, by Jeffrey Veen

Good presentation tips:


Seven Steps to Better Presentations, by Jeffrey Veen