RE: Which style of giving instructions is more effective?

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

Ah.  I swing both ways on this one. 

I see the argument for trimming words.

I also see the problem when ending a sentence with a command. 

What if the command MUST not have a terminating period - which is often the case for command-line stuff?

Now you'll get complaints that you left a sentence un-terminated.  Tsk!

As well, I generally prefer to word my lead-in such that the command 
can be shown alone on the next line:

command  -parametername <value> [-option <value>] [-otheroption <value>] [-force]



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kat Kuvinka
> Sent: December-19-12 2:37 PM
> To: Roberta Hennessey; Ryan Pollack
> Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: RE: Which style of giving instructions is more effective?
> 
> To restart the device, enter <command itself>
> 
> Trim some of the fat.
> 
> 
> >
> > IMHO, Restart is more active.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Ryan Pollack
> <ryan -at- clicksecurity -dot- com>wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'm debating the merits of two different styles of commands:
> > >
> > > "Enter the following command to restart the device:"
> > >
> > > (followed by the command itself)
> > >
> > > and
> > >
> > > "Restart the device by entering the following command:"
> > >
> > > (followed by the command itself)
> > >
> > > I've been flipping back & forth on these for years; now that I am
> creating
> > > a new documentation set, I'd like to be consistent, if that is even
> > > possible (or desirable).
> > >
> > > Any thoughts on the relative merits of each style? Situations when
> either
> > > would be useful? etc.
> > >
> > > Thanks for your input!
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > Ryan Pollack
> > > Senior Technical Writer | Click Security

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