RE: term for "numbers and letters but not punctuation or specialsymbols"

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Sam Beard wrote:
 
>    Why not "alpha-numeric characters, without punctuation or 
> special symbols"? It's wordy, but seems fairly clear to me. 
> Or, instead of alpha-numeric, if you're concerned about 
> misinterpretation of that, "letters and numbers...".

See, this is how review by committee makes good documentation go bad.
You start with "the more you enter, the better your results" -- simple
and straightforward, if not exactly revelatory. 

Someone wants to clarify what you enter -- letters. Someone else thinks
that's too limited -- characters. Someone else thinks the audience can't
cope with such a technical term (really??). Someone else wants to be
more specific and point out all the exclusions. 

The next thing you know, you've got a dense, unreadable paragraph
telling your users what 90-odd percent of them will consider "well, duh"
information. It's a search criteria field isn't it? You enter what
you're searching for, right? 

We know nothing about the context or subject matter, but I'm willing to
bet that not one person in a thousand would think to search for @, #, $,
&, ... If they do, the software tells them it wasn't found or isn't a
valid string, right? 

Don't make this so complicated.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------




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