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Subject:Re: Username or user name (generalized) From:"David Chinell" <dchinell -at- msn -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:28:41 -0400
It seems to me that all you're group is doing is pointing
out to the reader that they think there are errors in the
UI. Or that your group thinks they know better than the
programmers. Maybe they do, but I doubt that will help the
reader in any way.
How many times have you heard someone excuse inconsistent
terminology, saying "oh, they'll figure it out with no
trouble." To me, one of the differences between a
professional writer and an amateur is that the professional
never forces his reader to "figure it out." The reader has
bigger problems to solve than determining whether or not
User Name and UserID are the same thing.
I admire Dick Margulis' solution -- a creative deviation of
initial caps to identify a text-like field name without
resorting to special typography. Our solution is to use
qoutes, consistently, but at the writer's discretion, to
identify such names. But again, no special typography.
We also distinguish between a description of the value and
the actual, literal field name that holds the value. So we
might say, for example: Enter your user name in the UserID
field. Or Enter the first line of the address in the Address
field. The idea is that we don't ever use the field name to
name or describe the value entered in the field. We'd never
say: Enter your UserID, for example.
This gives us a little wiggle room to help the reader
understand inappropriate, inconsistent, or misleading field
names.
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