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Subject:RE: Display, Displays, or Appears From:"Chinell, David F (GE EntSol, Security)" <David -dot- Chinell -at- GE -dot- com> To:"Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- Users -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 9 Jun 2008 16:01:01 -0400
David:
Not in my shop. We only tell the reader where he or she is if there's a
high possibility of them being somewhere else instead.
In short, we follow the MS MoS as best we are able. Here's what they
say.
"As a general rule, tell the user where the action should take place
before describing the
action to take. This prevents users from doing the right thing in the
wrong place. However,
avoid overloading procedures with locators. Assume that the user is
looking at the screen
and is starting from the position where the procedure begins. For
example, the following
phrasing is typical: "On the View menu, click Zoom."
However, if there is a chance that the reader might be confused about
where the action
should take place or if an introductory phrase is needed, the following
wording can be
used: "To magnify your document, click View, and then click Zoom," or
"In Control Panel,
double-click Passwords, and then click Change Passwords."
Note that we don't interpret any of this as supporting
"stimulus-response" writing.
Bear
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+david -dot- chinell=ge -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+david -dot- chinell=ge -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Downing, David
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 3:25 PM
To: Lauren; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Display, Displays, or Appears
Lauren
But what if the next step in the procedure involves doing something with
the window that is opened? Wouldn't you then need to make a point of
first saying that the window is opened?
David
> I guess where we're coming from is that to say something "appears,"
> implied that it magically appears -- POOF! Like Cinderella's fairy god
> mother APPEARED to her.
When you look up in the sky, do clouds "appear" or are they "displayed"?
I prefer to avoid this repeating discussion and, after dealing with the
controversy of "Displays v. Appears," I try to avoid the use of the
terms altogether. "Displays" or "appears" usually refers to the
existence of a window, a screen, or a prompt. This existence is the
result of some action and the action should produce some result. In
other cases of actions, we do not go into detail about the existence of
the result, we just refer to the result that should be there if the
action was performed correctly.
Like, when an instruction tells a user how to apply bold to text. 1.
Select
the text. 2. Choose bold from the format menu (or whatever). We do not
then follow this with "and the text will appear (or display in) bold.
So,
why do we need to announce that an action opened a window?
I realize that when computer technology was new and people were learning
about how actions can cause "windows" to open, we needed to describe
this occurrence. But now, people know about windows; they don't need
their documentation dumbed-down to explain that a window or a screen or
a prompt will become available after an action, they know applications
do these things.
Lauren
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