Re: "Choose" vs. "Press"

["Bonnie Granat" <bgranat -at- granatedit -dot- com>]

Rakefet Zadik wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  I'm new to tech-writing.
>  The other tech-writer in the company uses
>  "Choose ENTER" in all the user manuals.
>  It seems to me that "Press ENTER" should
>  be used. According to the MS manual of styles -
>  "Press ENTER" should be used. But I can't seem to convince him.
>
>  Is there any style guide that uses "Choose ENTER"?

Probably there are lots of them, but that doesn't mean that they're
suitable for emulation.

>  Are there any other arguments I can use?
>

I like what Ant said. A shortened form would be to say, "OK, the user
has chosen Enter. Now what should he or she do?" (Same idea as Ant's.)

Another point is that "choose" usually relates to picking a single
item from a group of *likely* items ("choose a number from 1 to 10"),
any one of which might be possible to use.  In this case, of course,
choosing a letter of the alphabet would be rather meaningless.

Bonnie Granat
www.granatedit.com




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