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> For what it's worth, our rule of thumb is as follows:
> WARNING: Doing this may cause personal injury.
> CAUTION: Doing this may cause harm to the product or loss of
> data.
> NOTE: This material is provided to make your life with
> this product easier in some way.
> If icons are used, we go with the triangle/! icon for warnings and
> cautions. Our stanard note icon is a check mark in a box, as in,
> "Check this out!" Warnings regarding possible electric shock have
> a triangle/lightening bolt icon.
> If there are industry standards for these, I would be interested in
> documenting them for future reference.
The company I write for, Allen-Bradley Co., Inc., has standardized on Attention
as the catch-all for Warning and Caution. The reason being that we translate
most of our documentation into French, Italian, German, plus others.
These languages do not distinguish between the different levels of severity
(injury to people/damage to equip. and data). Both the "warning" and "caution"
translate to a form that closely resembles "attention."
In text we explain the hazards of not following the stated procedure/action.
The
icon is an exclamation point enclosed by a triangle.
Regards,
Lori Klepfer
Sr. Tech. Commun.
Allen-Bradley, Co., Inc.
(Cleveland, OH)
