Re: select and open

["Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- STARBASECORP -dot- COM>]

In response to the following...

> > Select and open the file to be converted.
> >
> > Now, I get very confused when I'm reading instructions like this. When
> > I see 'select', I want it to be followed immediately by the thing I'm
> > supposed to be selecting. I want to change this to
> >
> > Select the file to be converted, and open it.

Scot wrote...

> Well, I think it depends on the operating system that you are describing.
> For windows apps, I would tend to favour;

> 'Choose the file that you want to be converted'

> *Choose* being a Microsoft-derived term (look in their manuals). We use it
> in favour of 'click' (which implies a mouse). 'Choose' in this case subsumes
> the many *different* ways you can actually choose things in Windows - e.g.
> highlight and click ok/open, double click on filename, type the name in the
> filename field and press enter, etc. I've found people use their own
> preferred methods for this and resist changing to an unfamiliar method.

Well, Scot... Be prepared to revise your style guide. In Win95,
MS has forsaken "choose" for the more action-orineted "click"
as a result of (several hundered interations of) usability
testing. *And* they have chosen to document the "mouse" way
over the "keyboard" way as a general rule.

I got this info "from the horse's mouth" when I was at MS for
the Help Authoring Conference in January.

Sue Gallagher
StarBase Corp, Irvine CA
sgallagher -at- starbasecorp -dot- com