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RE: What do you assume as basic audience vocabulary?
Subject:RE: What do you assume as basic audience vocabulary? From:"Michele Marques" <marquesm -at- autros -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 18 Jan 2001 10:08:23 -0500
Tom Murrell writes in response to Kim McGarghan:
> However, if they don't change the terminology, I would be reluctant to
> change the documentation because to do so would inject uncertainty in
> the user's mind. (Do they mean there is another function labelled
> 'Format Disk', and I just haven't found it? Or do they mean me to use
> the 'Initialize Disk' function to format the disk as well?)
Alternatively, under the "Initialize Disk" portion of the manual/help, you
can write something like: "The Initialize Disk function will format your
disk and place initial required files on the disk." or "The Initialize Disk
function lets you initialize, or format, a disk without exiting our
program."
This will let your users know that this function will format the disk. Also,
when you create an index, you may want to index it under both terms, so that
people looking up "format" (without reading the entire manual or taking
guesses from your table of contents) can find the function.
On a related note, when we change the terminology in our UI, I leave the old
index terms in the index and add the new terms - this way people who are
looking for the function under the old name can still find it.
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