RE: Your thoughts on punctuation?

["technical writing plus" <doc-x -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

Methinks that for a US audience, no periods is best and is expected. For an
international audience, or for a non-US audience, perhaps periods would be
better. 

Jim Jones  http://tinyurl.com/4arjc

-----Original Message-----
Yves Jeaurond wrote

Typographical wisdom dictates that using ALL CAPS does mislead users on
messages of the same length,  especially short ones...There are exceptions:
the display may be too small or badly designed for CAPS/no caps to make a
difference. You'll have to judge the usability...So...If the machine is
making the user guess as to what happens next, dots can punctuate the
intent. "Calling server..."

For politeness, a period is cool.

  "Please wait."

Tell your engineers gently about customer etiquette, manners, protocol,
 grammar and syntax. :-) And how rude customers find it when these
are ignored.
   
  -- Reading David Allen's _Getting Things Done_ (2001)--
  
Andrew Warren wrote
 
  Ladonna Weeks wrote:

> Our product has a keypad used for installation and diagnostics. It can
> display up to four lines of 20 characters each. What is correct
> punctuation for brief, informative statements, such as the following:

> 
> (line 1) Calling server
> (line 4) Please wait
> 
> Should there be a period after each statement? I'm having trouble
> getting the programmers to add periods and I wonder if the convention
> for such displays is to leave them off. What is your experience?

Ladonna:

I don't use periods for that sort of thing; I punctuate and capitalize
as I would on a sign:

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