Re: On vs. In

[Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com>]

In article 89D9AEEFE123D511A6030002A534A93202FBE8 -at- THELMA, EHenderson -at- ftenergy -dot- com ("Henderson, Erin") writes:
>
>We have a bit of a debate going about the use of On and In for software
>documentation. I'd like to hear what the standards are for other companies.
>
>For example, which is better:
>Click OK on the main window.
>Click OK in the main window.
>
>Does it matter? Is there a particular reason for using one 
>over the other?
>

We use "in" because the feeling was that the button was 
"in" the window, but I suppose you could argue either way. 
We usually try to avoid this instruction altogether: if 
everything else you've been telling the user to do previously 
is in the main window, you can just say "Click OK" for the 
final step and there really isn't much potential for confusion.

>I
>tried to search this topic in the Techwr-l archive, but as you can imagine,
>you don't get a lot of useful results when searching "on and in."
>

For searching, you might try "click on" and "click in" or 
"in the window" and "on the window."

-- Janice

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