Word processors

Although specific templates are not mandated by the IEEE Style Manual, the MSC recommends its groups use one of the following:

1) The MSC supplied documenation tools, including consistent templates for popular word processors.

2) The IEEE supplied templates, located at:
           http://standards.ieee.org/resources/development/writing/templates.html

The open-source MSC templates were designed by a consensus process of experienced editors and are thought to be complete,  consistent, extensively documented, and relatively bug free.

This recommendation is intended to improve the efficiency of  MSC/IEEE reviewers/editors, by reducing template anomalies.

Adobe FrameMaker - The currently preferred IEEE format, commonly used by professional editors.
This relatively expensive word processor works well on large documents and yield predictable results.

Microsoft Word - The word processing tool provided by Microsoft Office.
This relatively inexpensive word processor is readily available on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh systems.

OpenOffice - An open-source operating-system independent word processor (see openoffice.org).
This free word processor appears to be powerful, but has a few clause/annex structure limitations.

Checklist

The Sponsor ballot requires the commitment of many volunteers to assist in the review of your document. To reduce consumption of  Sponsor ballot review time, MSC editors should accept the responsibility to carefully proof-read their drafts. This allows the Sponsor ballot reviewers to focus on technical content, as opposed to correction of typographical errors.

To assist the editors in their creation of Sponsor-ballot quality drafts, a checklist is provided. While conformance to this checklist does not ensure a high quality draft, checklist conformance should assist editors in overcoming many of the common errors contained within technical documents.

While checklist conformance is not a formal requirement to enter the Sponsor ballot phase of your project, the checklist must be provided to the MSC when your Sponsor ballot copy is reviewed.