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Re: 24/7 or 7/24?

Subject: Re: 24/7 or 7/24?
From: jimmy -at- breck-mckye -dot- com
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 12:44:27 +0100

It depends on the corporate style. Not everyone is writing service manuals for the aviation industry. I can think of several circumstances where '24/7' would be a natural fit to a explanatory copy or product blurb. Plenty of web services use this sort of language in their UI text ("Give a name to your awesome website!"; "Oops! Looks like we couldn't find the page you're looking for"), and it'd be inappropriate to break the company voice in consumer-facing materials.

On 08.05.2012 06:33, William Sherman wrote:

I would say not to use 24/7 as an indication of having round the
clock whatever it is you are giving. 24/7 is slang.

I don't believe slang has a place in technical documentation.

I don't believe aircraft manuals refer to GIB or DIB or even Whizzo,
yet that slang is in common use. They refer to the weapons officer,
co-pilot, navigator, or whatever the function is. You don't say it is
"big red switch time" but rather you say to reboot or power off the
computer. You do use blue screen, but blue screen is an accepted term
for a blue screen. I don't think I have ever seen in a technical
manual it called the blue screen of death or BSOD.

Many of the wording issues on this list the last few months have been
trying to get the language away from technical language and into a
"street" language. While some say it is necessary to hit the target
audience, I think there is a point where dumbing down the material for
the lowest common denominator is a mistake. What's next? We going to
write jive?


On 5/7/2012 12:20 PM, Peter Hirons wrote:
I would never use either. Say what you really mean "available round
the clock, 7 days a week" or just "Always on".

Peter




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References:
24/7 or 7/24?: From: B.J. Smith
RE: 24/7 or 7/24?: From: Peter Hirons
Re: 24/7 or 7/24?: From: B.J. Smith
RE: 24/7 or 7/24?: From: Porrello, Leonard
Re: 24/7 or 7/24?: From: William Sherman

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