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You don't find that a comments column is a big drain on available space, in a table?
Or, similarly, that it can result in lots of vacant cells that constitute non-helpful white-space?
I like the artful use of whitespace on a page of text or text-and-graphics, to enhance the readability, but if more than half the cells in a column are empty, I wonder why the author didn't just use asterisks and a couple of footnotes.
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Bulloch
Sent: November-08-13 12:41 PM
Cc: TECHWR-L Writing
Subject: Re: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?
At my company, we don't use footnotes in regular instructional text. Our practice for stuff like that is to indent a note icon (like a light bulb for tips or a yield sign for cautions) and a paragraph or so of text.
As far as tables go, I have seen table footnotes, but lately, the practice has been more toward putting such information in a Comments cell in the row.
On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>wrote:
> Looking at the MS Manual of Style 4, there are a few references to
> table footnotes, no mention of regular footnotes.
>
> There's also one reference that seems to presume the writer is using
> Word to edit WinHelp source: "Also, cross-references (See and See
> also) are limited to normal keywords that jump directly to the topic
> that contains the K (keyword) footnote with that keyword."
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