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Re: Documenting buttons with ellipses

Subject: Re: Documenting buttons with ellipses
From: Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 10:06:50 -0400




technicoid wrote:



The last time I checked, the Microsoft MoS recommended omitting the
ellipses. I personally doubt many users would be confused by the
omission of the punctuation in that context. Omission of an actual word
would be a no-no.


I'd agree and go a step further. There are situations where the screen control (whether it is a menu item or something else) is rendered in sentence style (initial cap, remainder of words lowercase). I know there are advocates of using a typographic convention such as bold to identify screen controls and keep capitalization the same; but, as I've said before, I prefer to just keep everything in normal type (not italic, not bold) and use initial caps to mark it in the text. So even though all the words (including any abbreviations or other oddities) are the same, the capitalization may not be. I've never gotten a complaint.

Of course, this change should only be at the style guide level; it's not up to the individual writer of an individual document to make the call if you're working in a group or extending an existing series.


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References:
RE: Documenting buttons with ellipses: From: technicoid

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