Re: Lots of acronyms

Subject: Re: Lots of acronyms
From: Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>
To: Jessica Weissman <Jessica -dot- Weissman -at- hillcrestlabs -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 09:17:50 -0500

Jessica Weissman wrote:

What I do is create a glossary listing all the terms.

I also link the first occurrence of each term on each screen/topic to a
popup with the glossary text.

Works reasonably well for acronym and initialism laden material.



I believe the original poster mentioned having up to 100 acronyms on a page. If most of those acronyms appear on the first page, the reader will have a hard time reading because of all the popups. Also, if the reader is using IE, and the popup blocker is turned on, he/she won't see them. In my opinion, links to your glossary would work better. That way, the people who want to know what the acronym stands for can click the link and those that either already know what it means, or could car less, can keep reading.

However, the glossary itself is a better idea than text riddled with acronyms followed by definitions.

Al

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References:
RE: Lots of acronyms: From: Jessica Weissman

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