Re: Font tussle -- bolding bolding everywhere

Subject: Re: Font tussle -- bolding bolding everywhere
From: Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>
To: Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:10:14 -0700

Hi Nancy,

Along with other suggestions to enforce a style guide, I would provably
steal from the DITA play book and wrap every UI control label as a
UIControl style (or in a UIControl element, if using XML). Then you can set
the style for all UIControl elements at once.

I thought MSTP said to italicized labels and bold commands. But I could be
mistaken. Depending on your target audience, you should just pick from MS,
Apple, or other favourite style guide (Yahoo?) and leave it at that.

-Tony

On Monday, August 11, 2014, Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net> wrote:

> Hi, all.
>
> My company's UIs use sentence style capitalization. So, the UI controls
> for setting the reference level are labeled
>
> Ref. level
> Ref. level down
> Ref. level up
>
> I refer to these controls in text by capping each term: "The vial
> controls are Ref. Level, Ref. Level Up, and Ref. Level Down."
>
> I reserve bolding for those UI items that I am telling the user to act
> on directly (select, tap, click, and so on.) But I know one of my
> reviewers is going to come back to me with "make these bold so people
> know they're control names" or even just "make these bold so they stand
> out."
>
> I can explain about the caps setting the names off, I can explain about
> reserving bold for actions, but if my questioner is persistent, I need
> a solid resource to explain why it's bad to have bold type popping up
> all over the page. Am I, in fact, simply going on my personal hunch
> that overapplied bolding is distracting on the page and probably
> reduces readability? Have I simply made up these claims?
>
> I just searched for "do not overuse bold text" and found a few
> articles, but they are very general. They go so far as to say "Bold
> less instead of more." Well, thanks.
>
> Are there any actual readability tests or other source of data
> regarding the effectiveness of varying amounts of bolding on a page? By
> the way, translation costs are not even a factor, since our
> translator's software recognizes and preserves the bolding codes. They
> don't have to be inserted manually.
>
> Thanks for all suggestions.
>
> --Nancy
>
>
>

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References:
Font tussle -- bolding bolding everywhere: From: Nancy Allison

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