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Subject:RE: How to mention usernames and passwords From:"Sweet, Gregory (HEALTH)" <gregory -dot- sweet -at- health -dot- ny -dot- gov> To:"Cardimon, Craig" <ccardimon -at- M-S-G -dot- com>, 'Gene Kim-Eng' <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>, 'TechWR-L' <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 14 Aug 2014 19:11:18 +0000
>
> Because there's no limit to the ways people can misread instructions.
>
I added "ex: fl12345" ( our UIDs are first initial, last initial, five-digit number) to the User ID field on the login form for our secure extranet, because we were getting lots of calls from people that couldn't remember their user ID or were trying one that didn't fit the pattern.
The text was light gray place holder text that immediately disappears when the field gets focus.
We were immediately flooded with calls from people who had "this weird user ID that I didn't enter" when they opened the page.
To answer the original question we follow Gene's format in documentation.
Thanks,
Greg
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