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I am working on a user guide for a complex software application being
developed for use by telecommunications companies.
The product has many different screens that they are calling Forms. Each
Form has a different function and has many different data input fields that
need to be described.
But the description of some of the fields is quite obvious and can be
discerned from the field title. Since the system is so complex, each Form
field that will be described in the user guide must have some text either
descibing the use of the field or indicating the data type to input into the
field. Still, some field descriptions are self explanatory as they appear at
many instances throughout the system eg. description, country name,
international ID etc.
For consistency, what I suggest is to use a generic text to as the
desciption of these field types. Some have come up, but in my opinion these
sound a bit condescending to the user.
(self-explained)
(self-defined)
Can you suggest a better way to handle this situation?
Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Stan
Stan Smith
Technical Writer
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When all else fails, read the manual. If that doesn't work, do what it says.
