RE: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?

Subject: RE: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?
From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
To: Scott Bulloch <scott -dot- bulloch -at- gmail -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 10:39:26 -0500

You don't find that a comments column is a big drain on available space, in a table?
Or, similarly, that it can result in lots of vacant cells that constitute non-helpful white-space?
I like the artful use of whitespace on a page of text or text-and-graphics, to enhance the readability, but if more than half the cells in a column are empty, I wonder why the author didn't just use asterisks and a couple of footnotes.



-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Bulloch
Sent: November-08-13 12:41 PM
Cc: TECHWR-L Writing
Subject: Re: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?

At my company, we don't use footnotes in regular instructional text. Our practice for stuff like that is to indent a note icon (like a light bulb for tips or a yield sign for cautions) and a paragraph or so of text.

As far as tables go, I have seen table footnotes, but lately, the practice has been more toward putting such information in a Comments cell in the row.


On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>wrote:

> Looking at the MS Manual of Style 4, there are a few references to
> table footnotes, no mention of regular footnotes.
>
> There's also one reference that seems to presume the writer is using
> Word to edit WinHelp source: "Also, cross-references (See and See
> also) are limited to normal keywords that jump directly to the topic
> that contains the K (keyword) footnote with that keyword."

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References:
Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?: From: Bruce Megan (ST-CO/MKP3)
Re: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?: From: Robert Lauriston
RE: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?: From: Brian.Henderson
Re: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?: From: Robert Lauriston
Re: Footnotes - acceptable in technical documentation?: From: Scott Bulloch

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