UOP COM172 DQ WEEK 2

What is a style guide? Is adhering to a style guide important? Why or why not?
A style guide is a set of rules to follow for writing. We adhere to the style guide to ensure our work is consistent. There are several writing types such as technical, commercial, journalism etc. We used a technical style guide to ensure that multiple authors would be able to update the operation manual. Using the technical style guide kept the tone of the document consistent and it was difficult to determine the additions to the original base manual.

Is there a difference between paraphrasing and summarizing? What is it? How do you know when it is most appropriate to use one or the other in an academic paper?
When summarizing we condense the main points into a shorter version of the author’s original work. Attention to proper citation should be used when summarizing as the possibility of plagiarism is greater. The summarization technique is often used to bring attention to the author’s more important portions. When we paraphrase we take the author’s body of work and rewrite it using one’s own words. While paraphrasing we must keep true to the author’s original ideas. We use paraphrasing when we want to quote the authors original words with disregard to the author’s style or we feel that the author’s ideas are important but that the context may be more complicated for the intended reader to understand. We determine if we need to summarize if we want to convey the author’s main ideas and give only an overview of the topic. Whichever technique we choose we must ensure that we properly cite the original author.