Re: Quote Marks

[Tracy Boyington <trlyboyi -at- GENESIS -dot- ODVTE -dot- STATE -dot- OK -dot- US>]

> In technical writing, one reason for leaving the period outside the
> quotation marks is that a user does not SEE the period on the item in
> the menu. It could be confusing in some situations, though probably
> not in the example here. A better approach would be to leave off the
> quotation marks and, if necessary, bold the words Edit and Cut. In
> fact, I can't recall ever seeing any user guides that DID use
> quotation marks for commands or menu items.

So, while we're all here, let's come up with a good way to do this.
I've used italics for things the user types, small caps for keys
(such as ENTER or F3), bold for menu commands. I'm not saying
these are best; just that this is what I've used. And the punctuation
situation has always bothered me. What does everybody else do?


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Tracy Boyington
Technical Communication Specialist
Oklahoma Department of Vocational & Technical Education
Stillwater, Oklahoma

I never express opinions, but if one slips out, it belongs
to me and not ODVTE.

"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out
with nothing but a bunch of blank paper."
-- Steve Martin
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