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Subject:When to bold From:Jo Baer <jbaer -at- mailbox1 -dot- tcfbank -dot- com> To:Techwriter List <TECHWR-L -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 24 Feb 2000 13:22:16 -0600
I find that you can use just about any convention as long as you explain
it to the user--provide a key somewhere.
We use one character style for the names of fields and the possible
values in those fields. We use another to depict full keying sequences.
Both styles use helvetica narrow bold, and stand out from the
surrounding body text.
Field names and values are in all caps (we use a small font size, so
these characters are roughly the height of lower case characters in our
body text).
Keying sequences, including key names, are in upper and lower case
because that's how the keys are labeled and how information appears on
the screen when keyed. We use the same font size as for field names and
values.
Given the small font size, the text doesn't scream at you, but does
stand out from the surrounding text. Using one font for both styles
avoids the "look how many fonts I have" appearance.
