Re[2]: SUMMARY: Choosing a menu option

Subject: Re[2]: SUMMARY: Choosing a menu option
From: bkane -at- ARTISOFT -dot- COM
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 09:01:34 MTN

James,
It isn't that people are simple, it's that they are in a hurry.

When you're in a big hurry to carry out a task, you often don't read
the entire sentence before getting started on the task. I've done this
myself, and that's what convinced me to be sure to cite the menu name
first.

The user's eyes flash back and forth from the instructions to the
window he's working on.

For example, "Select Save Draft from the Message menu" could cause a
person to look up from the instructions and scurry to find "Save Draft"
before finishing the sentence. The wasted time will frustrate him, as
"Save Draft" isn't even visible until he has clicked the Message menu.

So "From the Message menu, select Save Draft" is the way to go to make
for happy customers.

Beth Kane
bkane -at- artisoft -dot- com

<snip>
I'm surprised so many technical writers dismiss the "Choose Message from the
Create menu" format based soley on the word sequence. Are our readers really so
simple that they cannot determine the order that short sentence conveys?

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