Re: FONT STANDARDS

["Michael West" <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- com>]

Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
> The only place I might ever write the instructions for SW this way is
> in individual command displays in context-sensitive help.

Context sensitive help is intended to help user who
are looking at a particular object or dialog and aren't
sure what to do with it. But what about users who know
what they want to do, but aren't sure where it is or what it's
called? How would your method help them?

Might it not be helpful to have a separate topic addressing
strategies for avoiding the loss of documents and
changes to documents? After all, that that is
one of the most common (and potentially costly)
problems experienced by users of word processing
programs.

>In a
> printed manual, I would say "To set options, select Tools -> Options.
> The Options dialog is displayed."

What does the second sentence accomplish?

> Then a brief rundown of each
> option ("Always Create Backup
> Copy checkbox:  Creates backup copies yadda yadda,")

Don't you think most users, once they've found that checkbox,
would understand what it is for simply by reading the label?
It seems to me you're writing help for a situation where help
is not really needed (although it might be useful to tell them
*where* those backup copies are saved, since that isn't obvious).
How many people who see the words "Always create backup
copy" and do not understand them would be helped in any
way by being told "Creates backup copies"?  (yadda yadda
indeed!) Aren't you just repeating what they can already see?

The real problem, I think, is how to get a user who is
concerned about lost documents or revisions to drill down
to that "options" property sheet. There's nothing intuitive
about that.
-- 
Michael West