Re[2]: SUMMARY: Choosing a menu option

[bkane -at- ARTISOFT -dot- COM]

     James,
     It isn't that people are simple, it's that they are in a hurry.

     When you're in a big hurry to carry out a task, you often don't read
     the entire sentence before getting started on the task. I've done this
     myself, and that's what convinced me to be sure to cite the menu name
     first.

     The user's eyes flash back and forth from the instructions to the
     window he's working on.

     For example, "Select Save Draft from the Message menu" could cause a
     person to look up from the instructions and scurry to find "Save Draft"
     before finishing the sentence. The wasted time will frustrate him, as
     "Save Draft" isn't even visible until he has clicked the Message menu.

     So "From the Message menu, select Save Draft" is the way to go to make
     for happy customers.

     Beth Kane
     bkane -at- artisoft -dot- com

<snip>
 I'm surprised so many technical writers dismiss the "Choose Message from the
 Create menu" format based soley on the word sequence. Are our readers really so
 simple that they cannot determine the order that short sentence conveys?

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