Re: Using the conjunction OR in mutually exclusive options

[Donna McManus <donna -dot- mcmanus -at- gmail -dot- com>]

This is the kind of sticky wicket logic that I strive hard to avoid. Perhaps
I ought to take the zen approach on this and just accept it, but I just
can't.

Using the or conjunction indicates that these are not sequential. It is a
decision point. If you do A, then something follows. If you do B, then
something else follows.

Using mutually exclusive choices means making either choice leads you down
the same path. So perhaps I'm being thick headed or simple minded.

I've seen/worked with style guides that state similar as well, and I want to
bang my head. We don't have a style guide per se. I'm in an environment now
where it's all in one person's head. And hopefully that won't lead to style
guides based simply on personal preferences--either mine or someone else's.
But on this issue, I think my difficulty lies in three ideas that came to
mind immediately when reading Mark's post.

1) it assumes the reader is not very bright and can't distinguish between a
pair of choices that will give him the same result
2) it's a waste of breath (or words)
3) when OS changes come along or software is upgraded, both choices have to
be re-validated (which leads to insanity when you have tons of docs that use
this approach)

When I think about it, at least in the audience that I'm writing to, they
don't want to waste time thinking about which fork in the road to take.
They're on a production line. Give them the clearest, shortest, easiest path
to the goal: make the mark on the part. Besides, I don't want my job
security to come from having to update more text than necessary. I want my
job security to come from the fact I can produce clean, understandable,
appropriate text and be more creative.

Ugh is right.

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Lauren <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net> wrote:

> I had one contract where the current lead technical writer said that the
> company discussed this rule for two full days.  They wound up with a style
> guide rule that the conjunction "or" in this case *must* be used as a list
> separator between two enumerated items, offset with bold and with hyphens.
>  I think "or" must also be capitalized.  An example in their style follows
> that includes their usage of colons and what I can remember of the tab.  The
> use of asterisks is for bold.  Their rule may have required lowercase, but
> there was a discussion about whether the conjunction required upper- or
> lowercase.
>
> When there are two ways to perform a process:
>
> 1. Pick one option and use only that option.
>
>     *- OR -*
>
> 2. List each option and separate the each option with "*- OR -*."
>
> <Help me.>
>
> I would not choose to enumerate the list and I prefer to state in advance
> how many ways there are to complete a given process and then follow that
> with a bulleted list of options.
>
> Lauren
>
>
>
>
> On 9/8/2011 12:48 PM, Donna McManus wrote:
>
>> All, I'm just gathering opinion. Feel free to opine away.
>>
>> I am seeing the use of the conjunction OR in mutually exclusive options in
>> procedures. This is even given as an example in Microsoft's Manual of
>> Style
>> (if you have the 3rd version, see p123):
>>
>> To open a menu:
>> - Press Alt+the key for the underlined letter in the menu name
>>     -or-
>> - Use the LEFT ARROW key or the RIGHT ARROW key to move to another menu
>>
>> I'm more of the mind to write the procedure as:
>>
>> Use one of two methods to open a menu:
>> - Press Alt+the key for the underlined letter in the menu name
>> - Use the LEFT ARROW key or the RIGHT ARROW key to move to another menu
>>
>> What is your opinion? I can't quite put my finger on it, but it bugs me to
>> no end to have to be so explicit that we have to emphasize that two
>> options
>> are mutually exclusive. Is this more for translation purposes that
>> Microsoft
>> would recommend this?
>>
>
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