Re: Nitpicky little style question
You can't just invent new style and language and usage based on what you think will work for a user.SInce I was born before the computer age, most of the styles, language and usage I learned at the outset of formal education didn't address today's landscape. For example, when I was a kid, a radio button was associated with the big tube radio sitting on top of the corner table, and a check box was someplace where you placed the canceled checks after they were returned from the bank. Times change, terminology changes...regardless of our habits.
What "works" for a user is style and language and usage of which he is not even aware. That means style and language and usage he expects from habit. Those habits are begun at the outset of formal education, are expanded as the reader exposes himself to different communication media, and are reinforced on a daily basis.
The mechanical underpinnings of those habits are codified in various style guides and dictionaries, and are not invented by individual writers.
Personally, I have no problem with individuals trying to clarify their communications. I support style guides, but I also see most style guides are also constantly evolving. Just as the product landscape has changed since I began my career in technology, so should our ways of explaining those new products to our readers. This requires experimentation with the terms until those experiments congeal down to a standard term, as "Radio Button" has evolved to become "Option" and "Click On" has become "Click."
As for habits and readers....if you call a radio button an "Fred's Folly," provide a definition and use the term consistently throughout your documentation, I don't think the readers would be lost in cyberspace.
It's only my opinion....
Al
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Follow-Ups:
- RE: Nitpicky little style question, Chinell, David F \(GE Indust, Security\)
- Lots of acronyms (Was: Nitpicky little style question), Jonathan West
- RE: Nitpicky little style question, Suzanne Chiles
References:
RE: Nitpicky little style question: From: Chinell, David F \(GE Indust, Security\)
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