Re: FONT STANDARDS

[Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>]

Anna,

THERE YOU GO WITH THE SHOUTED SUBJECT LINES AGAIN!

The trend in the last couple of decades has been from the extreme of 
showing every type of on-screen object with a distinct typographic 
treatment toward the extreme of not differentiating anything.

The rationale for this shift is threefold: readers really cannot keep in 
their heads the meanings of eight different type styles, nor should they 
have to; with careful writing, the context makes the meaning clear 
anyway; the more complex the scheme, the likelier it is that the 
document will have formatting errors around this issue, further 
confusing the few readers who do manage to keep it all straight.

I think the majority opinion (though not an absolute consensus by any 
means) is that it is best to keep all this signification stuff as simple 
as possible.

You MIGHT want to keep code samples in a monospace font like Courier 
(there are better choices for code that distinguish clearly between zero 
and capital oh, and between one and lowercase ell). I've seen plenty of 
situations where even this is overkill.

You MIGHT want to use bold to identify field names, although I prefer 
using capitals and not using bold. The decision might depend on the 
audience and the medium, though. For online work, I wouldn't use bold as 
a marker for the simple reason that the difference between bold and 
normal may not be visible in the viewing environment. I use initial 
caps, regardless of whether the field label on the screen has initial 
caps. For example, if the screen prompt is "Select a file type," I'll 
refer to the Select a File Type list in preference to using quotation 
marks or bold. This goes against the usual advice to make the text match 
the screen, so follow my lead only with extreme caution on this one.

You MIGHT want to use small caps for, say, key names,, button names, or 
list selections; but I wouldn't bother. Again, I use an initial cap. 
Press Enter. Click Cancel. Select Design Template (*.pot).

Just my opinion.

Dick

Anna Langley wrote: