Re. Identifying commands in text

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

 Traci Eyer asked how to identify commands or buttons in
 documentation. The simplest and least intrusive approach is
 to use a monospaced "typewriter" font (e.g., some variant
 of Courier) that differs visually from the typical
 proportional font (e.g., Times) used for the body text.
 This works well for two main reasons: the weight (darkness)
 of the font is similar enough to that of the main text that
 the commands don't hit the reader in the face (unlike, say,
 boldface or all caps), yet the visual difference is enough
 to explain that the word is something different from the
 main description. Stay away from all caps, because in some
 software, the commands are case-sensitive: for example, in
 the Mac version of WordPerfect, command-w closes a window
 but command-shift-W (the upper-case equivalent) switches
 between open windows.

 You can also use "key caps" fonts, letters that have little
 bounding boxes and thus resemble keyboard keys, but I find
 these visually jarring for long stretches such as words or
 complex chains such as "choose file-->open-->test". They do
 work very well for such things as "press command-option-S",
 in which they replace the spelled-out names for the command
 and option keys with visual depictions (in my experience,
 some neophytes don't instantly learn which is the command
 or option key) and they also shorten the text. Again, you
 have to minimize this use because the square boxes stand
 out and the page looks like a ransom letter if the boxes
 are too abundant.

 --Geoff Hart    @8^{)}
 geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

 Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of our
 reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.