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<<How many times do you use quantum in day to day conversation?>>
Oh, all the time! ;) But, unlike "prepend," it's in a mainstream dictionary
(American Heritage) and is defined as, "A quantity or amount of something."
Actually, I agree with you about jargon and using it with the correct
audience. When I have a technical audience, I will use jargon because it's
what they're expecting and what they understand and, frankly, it's easier to
get the point across. However, the company I work for writes custom
applications (thin-client and thick-client [See, jargon!])and Web sites.
Since I'm never quite sure who the audience is going to be (most of the time
the client doesn't even know), I try to avoid jargon.
I've had some "discussions" with some of the programmers over the UI
terminology for Web applications (for example, do you call it a "window,"
"page," or "screen"). Some of the programmers feel that I should use other
terminology because these are Web applications and not Windows OS. They may
be right, but no one has come up with a better alternative. My argument is
that since most users (novice and technical) are using Windows OS, it's
probably better to use Windows terminology. We've agreed to disagree and,
unless the client has specific objections, use Windows terminology for
applications.
What are you and others doing? How do you write usable documentation when
you haven't any idea who your audience is? How do you write usable
documentation when you know that your audience ranges from novice to very
technical and everything has to be in a single document? Sometimes this can
be really frustrating, but it's always a challenge.
Margaret
mbeilby -at- ebuilt -dot- com
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