Your typographical conventions

[Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>]

I'm working on a docset that will be distributed as PDFs. It's about a software application.

At my last gig, we had a font for everything under the sun. The Typographical Conventions table pretty much filled an entire page. It was overkill. If readers noticed it at all, I suspect they may have had a sinking feeling as they thought, "Am I supposed to remember this??" Of course, they're not. The fonts are supposed to be an aid, not a burden, and in my view the reader shouldn't have to be critically aware of them.

What would you pick out in special fonts?

I'm leaning toward having only these:

Titles of documents, and emphasis: italics
Code and system messages: Monospaced font
User actions (data entered, menu picks, buttons clicked): bold

I *think* simple capitalization is enough to set off field names, window titles, etc. But this is the one I'm waffling on.

What are your minimum special fonts for a software doc?
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