RE: Is there a more succinct way to say this?

["Leonard C. Porrello" <Leonard -dot- Porrello -at- SoleraTec -dot- com>]

Along the lines Janice suggests, you may want to step back and ask a
more basic question. Do you want to define every possible path to your
users or take a minimalist approach, describing one path and leaving it
to them to figure out other paths (granted other paths conform to
popular standards)? In other words, since "Enter" works instead of "OK"
in most Windows applications, why not simply say "Click OK" and leave it
to the user to figure out that he can also press "Enter" (granted he is
using a Windows application)?

Leonard

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+leonard -dot- porrello=soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+leonard -dot- porrello=soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- c
om] On Behalf Of Janice Gelb
Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 2:58 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Is there a more succinct way to say this?

Cardimon, Craig wrote:
> Is there a better way of saying, "Press ENTER or click the OK button?"

> 
> After you type something like this in 700 million times, you begin to
> wonder.
> 

You can establish this in a general section about
how the interface works ("If the OK button is
highlighted, pressing Return is the equivalent
of clicking the OK button") and then in the actual
steps, just say "Click OK."

Our style guide recommends including "the xxx button"
if the button is not a common one but we feel that
users will not be confused by common buttons like
OK or Cancel and that you can just say "Click OK"
in this case.

-- Janice

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