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In the sentence you gave, I would always choose "appears" because it means
"shows up" or "becomes visible." "Display" is a transitive verb, meaning
that the action transfers to something else; in your situation, it's the
computer monitor which is literally "displaying" the information. The
information itself is appearing.
Hope this helps,
John
Michelle wrote:
>
>Which is the correct, appears or displays? Is it a matter of preference or
>is one grammatically correct?
>
>1) The imported information appears in a table.
>
>or
>
>2) The imported information displays in a table.
>
>In the past I've used displays because I always feel that appears denotes
>that something "magical" has happened.
>
>What do you all think?
>
>Thanks in advance for your help.
>Michelle
John Hoppe, Technical Editor
johnh -at- radionics -dot- com
Radionics, Inc.
781-272-1233 x277
