RE: Hyphenation on Web Application Pages

["Technical Writing Plus" <doc-x -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

I remember that when I had to write papers in school, the limit was 2
hyphenations (EOL) per page. I would imagine that for media such as the Web,
the limit is probably zero EOL hyphenations per page. But standards vary I
guess. 

Jim Jones  	chineseadjuster.webs.com  	stc-chicago-jim.blogspot.com

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 2:29 PM

...We have a dilemma. There is a welcome page that our users see that allows
them to log in and see someone else's work. The written text on this page
was done by someone else (not a technical communicator).

I was told that it was written to be more "friendly" than the usual
technical writing. (It starts with the equivalent of "dude" and it's not a
gaming system!)

There are a few problems with it, including some pretty obvious grammar
errors, but I am wondering about something else. The text is in a rather
narrow column down the side of the page, and some of it is hyphenated (and
hyphenated at the first two characters).  I have noticed recently that some
of the twenty- and thirty-somethings around here have some trouble reading
hyphenated words in text.

This got me thinking. I could think of very few examples of hyphenated text
in columns in recent articles. It is rare even in our local newspaper. I
think we should not hyphenate the text in the browser window, but I don't
have any hard evidence to support this, just watching people try to read
it...

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http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

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