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Subject:Re: Writing Conventions From:Rose Wilcox <RWILC -at- FAST -dot- DOT -dot- STATE -dot- AZ -dot- US> Date:Tue, 31 Oct 1995 10:18:00 PST
David Dubin replied promptly and considerately to Jennifer Chiki's question
with the following:
>Jennifer Chiki asked about certain writing conventions. I can tell you how
we
>approach these information types.
>1. Directories
>We use all caps to write the names of all directories, subdirectories, and
>files if we are writing the actual name, but initial caps if we are
referring
>to a directory name
>Example: "The WPWIN directory contains all of the information for
WordPerfect
>and contains the Setup file. You must use the SETUP.EXE file to initiate
the
>program.
This is okay in a DOS-based system, but the examples Jennifer gave looked
UNIX- (or is it Unix- ;-)) based to me. Since UNIX is case-sensitive, using
all caps would get you zapped by the Great Documentation Guru in the sky,
who is in charge of lightning and capitalization conventions.
So what I do if I can, depending on the formatting tool I am using, is to
choose a good-looking monospace font such as Courier to set them off from
the good-looking proportional font I have the regular text in.
>2. Script Names
>We use initial caps for the names of scripts.
Depends on if they can be entered as mixed case names. May not be able too.
I would format them the same as commands in a Unix environment. I don't
like too much "hoo hah" with bolding, etc. Clutters your design.
>3. Attributes
>We use initial caps for these attributes.
Same comments....
Well, I'm off to buy Halloween treats, hopefully in the form of some
innocuous toy, rather than evil, rotten sugar! Wish me luck!
Rose A. Wilcox (the "A" stands for "Abstinent from Sugar, just for today")
rwilc -at- fast -dot- dot -dot- state -dot- az -dot- us
ncrowe -at- primenet -dot- com
"When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace."
J. Lubbock
