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For ease of reference to each item, it is better to have a lettered or numbered list instead of a bulleted list.
-----Original Message-----
From: Nelson Vargas <nelson -dot- vargas -at- gmail -dot- com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2022 6:15 PM
To: Thorsten Konersmann <tk -at- documentation -dot- engineering>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Single Note and multiple Notes
Thank you, Everyone! Those were great answers, very helpful. And Thorsten's point, "Signal words (and their translations in the standardâs annex) are only ever listed and used as singulars," sold me on singular.
Gratefully,
Nelson
On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 4:29 PM Thorsten Konersmann <tk -at- documentation -dot- engineering> wrote:
> When such questions come up, I look for public style guides and
> industry standards.
>
> The ANSI Z535.6-2011 (R2017) standard on product safety information
> comes to my mind first in this case because it defines signal words
> for safety messages (corresponding to levels of risk, namely âDANGER,â âWARNING,â
> âCAUTION,â and âNOTICEâ).
>
> The âNoteâ heading in your question is similar to signal words, and
> the standard is analogous to your example as it explicitly allows to
> combine multiple safety messages into one.
>
> The question of singular vs. plural for signal words, however, is
> discussed not once in this standard. There is no mentioning of, for
> example, when to use the plural âWARNINGSâ instead of âWARNINGâ (which
> makes sense to me considering their purpose of signaling levels of risk).
>
> Signal words (and their translations in the standardâs annex) are only
> ever listed and used as singulars.
>
> ANSI Z535.6:
>https://webstore.ansi.org/standards/nema/ansiz5352011r2017-1668876
>
>
>
> On Tue 19. Apr 2022 at 20:24 Nelson Vargas <nelson -dot- vargas -at- gmail -dot- com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear List,
>>
>> My colleagues and I are wondering how best to handle the situation
>> where we include a single note anywhere in our content or multiple
>> Notes. The specific issue we are puzzling over is whether to title a
>> list of notes with the word Note or the plural form Notes. Our only
>> reason for going with the singular is to avoid forgetting to add the
>> s when using the plural.
>> It's simpler to just add Note everywhere.
>>
>> This came up after we decided to move away from using a run-in title
>> with just Note for every individual note. In our Help, that often
>> appear a bit heavy, so we're trying a bulleted list with either Note
>> or Notes as the signal word.
>>
>> With Gratitude,
>> Nelson Vargas
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