Re: The Use of Future Tense in Procedures

Subject: Re: The Use of Future Tense in Procedures
From: Len Olszewski <saslpo -at- UNX -dot- SAS -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 21:19:47 GMT

In article <9611122044 -dot- AA06536 -at- starquest -dot- com>, Deborah Meltzer
<deborah -at- starquest -dot- com> writes:

[...]

|> The only time I would use the future tense is with a sentence like "If you
|> press the Kill key everything will explode." I played around with saying
|> "everything explodes" instead, but it seems to me that if an action is not
|> desirable, it's better to keep it out of the present and hope that it lives
|> in a non-existent future.

[...]

I've had a lot of luck with using the imperative and expressing the
result as an infinitive, thereby eliminating the need for the future
tense. Something like

"Press the kill key to make everything explode."

or

"Select the frammis button to open the frammis file dialog window."

That sort of thing.

--
Len O. EXISTENTIAL SODA:
saslpo -at- unx -dot- sas -dot- com Have young, drink fun, be Pepsi.


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