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Drop the Icon. Drop the color. Add the word "Note".Â
The principles involved here are very simple:
* Be clear
* Avoid redundancy
The word "Note" is the clearest way to point out that something is a note. People might not know that the icon means. They might not know what the color means. They will certainly know what "Note" means.
Since the word "Note" is sufficient to indicate that a note is a note, the icon and the color are redundant and should be removed. You do need some kind of formatting to indicate where a note ends, such as a box or indentation of the note, but this should be the minimum necessary to do the job.Â
Mark
On 2018-10-16 8:53:03 AM, Sion Lane <sion -dot- lane -at- unit4 -dot- com> wrote:
We currently use appropriate icons, indentation and a different background to indicate notes, tips and warnings in our help topics and pdf content. A proposal has been made that we also use autonumbering to add the word 'Note' 'Tip' etc.
I feel this is overkill, the icon in conjunction with the background colour act as a visual representation of that word so to add the word as well makes it almost tautological. The nature of the message should also be obvious from the text itself. I should add that we do not currently have an 'About this Help' topic that explains the icons and there is no desire to add one.
What are other people's opinions?
Am I crazy to be so bothered about this?
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