TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Thank you, everyone who responded to my RoboHelp questions earlier. My
current question pertains to the same project-online help for a new
software program. I am new at software documentation and have lots of
questions.
I am writing on-line help for a program being developed in Oracle. To
start with, I was furnished with a list of Oracle terminology, which
included forms, zones, and fields. The documentation already finished uses
these terms, so I did the same thing, only to discover that a zone is
invisible to the user, and there are also columns of fields that need
names. The terms were so confusing that the previous documentation was
using them erratically. Overall, I found that the programmer terms just
don't work for a non-programmer user.
Oracle obviously prides itself on it's non-standard terminology. Is there
some standardized user terminology I could use to make my documentation
understandable to my readers? Thanks for any advice out there.