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Subject:Re: GUI names: forms vs. windows From:Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:53:48 -0700
Sharon Burton-Hardin wrote:
>
> We chose the MS style guide in my company for clients that have no style
> guide. The reasoning is this:
>
> Since MS owns the world - even Macs come with MS software installed - if
> users have ever read help or a user guide, it is probably a MS written one.
> Therefore, they are probably used to reading about stuff that is referred to
> the way MS does it. If that is what the user is used to, why make them learn
> a new way of talking about all that stuff AND how to use this product.
>
It's not that "MS owns the world" - it must be obvious from my tag
line that I contest that statement :-)
The MS Style Guide is useful on its own merits, not because of the
company that publishes it. In fact, MS documentation regularly
ignores it. Rather, the MS Style Guide is useful as a place to start
thinking about the proper names of things. Also, its writers usually
have very sensible suggestions, such as using "drop-down list"
instead of "combo box" in end user documentation. In other words,
the MS Style Guide fills purposes that nothing else does.
--
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
604.421.7189 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"Haven't you ever harbored the secret thought that Huck and Jim are
- at this instant - poling their raft down some river just beyond
our reach, so much more real are they than the shoe clerk who fitted
us just a forgotten day ago?"
- Dan Simmons, "Hyperion"
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