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Subject:RE: Symbols in product names From:"Spreadbury, David C." <David -dot- Spreadbury -at- marconi -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 28 Oct 2002 11:32:44 -0500
I believe, legally, you MUST do it at the first occurrence, at a minimum. I
usually do it on the copyright page and then at the first occurrence. If you
are using FrameMaker, you can include it in a variable and then just insert
the variable if you want it to appear wherever used.
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Patrick [mailto:susan -dot- patrick -at- fti-ibis -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 10:31 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Symbols in product names
Hello All,
I've got a question about writing unusual product names. When a product name
has symbols in it, do you have include the symbols in the name throughout
the user documentation?
Here's our situation:
We've got a software product name that's an acronym. Let's call it BOB,
short for Bucket Or Beachball. During the development process, someone in
Marketing discovered that there was already another, albeit unrelated,
product on the market called BOB. Our Marketing department decided to
differentiate us by writing BOB with bullets between each letter:
B<bullet>O<bullet>B. Fine for them, but now we're writing user documentation
and typing in all these bullets is becoming a pain, not to mention a
conversion nightmare. We are now embroiled in an interdepartmental debate
over whether the bullets are necessary within the user docs. Which do you
believe is correct?
a) Write the product name B<bullet>O<bullet>B every time, as Marketing
insists.
b) Write the product name B<bullet>O<bullet>B on its first appearance in
each book, then switch to BOB.
c) Write the product name BOB throughout each book, and leave the bullets in
the cover logo graphic only.
d) Something entirely different.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
Susan Patrick
susan -dot- patrick -at- fti-ibis -dot- com
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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