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>If you are writing for the totally clueless, a screen capture of the
>actual menus next to the "shorthand" of the angle brackets the first
>few times will surely get the point across.
That's exactly what I did for an instruction for almost 3000 people in a
company who needed to change a setting in their email clients after a major
overnight migration. I preferred the MS style, but my manager wanted me to
use angle brackets instead. Over 99 percent was able to complete the task
successfully. These were people ranging from factory floor machine operators
to the CEO. I did mark the options in the screen shots, similar to this: http://www.3dnuts.com/tutorials/mat_metal/tut4_full2.gif
I guess that's pretty idiot proof.
Because I write mostly for Microsoft certification exams, I don't have a
real choice, as Microsoft uses their own style in the actual exams. I have
to write it all out. And including a screenshot for every option is simply
too much work. I've heard many complaints about the MS style from exam
candidates. Understanding them while actually performing the action is one
thing, memorizing every possible path doesn't make much sense to many.
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