Re: When to use the word "button" -- ?

[Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Again, I think it depends on the audience. I'm writing for urologists using
our touchscreen interface. The majority are a very impatient lot (read: *prima
donas*) and any excuse to not adopt the use of our product in their
practice seems to be valid (to them), in that they've always performed
their duties using old school methodology and it's working fine (so they
think). (Here I wonder how long it took them to warm up to using
ultrasound.)

Having wrestled with this stylistic issue, I use "button" in these user
manuals, e.g., Touch the *[Gymfract]* button. Having a sense for their
collective mindset (judging from comments coming back to me from our field
reps), the physicians seem to need this extra bit of clarity.

In all other tw realms, I follow current practices and do not use the word.
Rather, the above would read Touch *[Gymfract]*, where the square brackets
and boldface serve as a visual clue that the manual is referring to an
oncreen button. Yes, I could explain this in a style guide at the front of
these current manuals, but none of them bother to RTFM anyway.

> Chris

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Combs, Richard
<richard -dot- combs -at- polycom -dot- com>wrote:

> Craig Cardimon wrote:
>
> > "Click the Continue button to proceed."
> >
> > Or just:
> >
> > "Click Continue to proceed."
>
> Omit needless words.
>
> Richard G. Combs
> Senior Technical Writer
> Polycom, Inc.
> richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
> 303-223-5111
> ------
> rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
> 303-903-6372
> ------
>
>
>
>
>
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