Re: Style and Brevity in steps (long)

[Matt Craver <MCraver -at- OPENSOLUTIONS -dot- COM>]

Hutchings, Christa [cwhutchings -at- HOMEWIRELESS -dot- COM] wrote:
>We just recently went through a discussion of this on the list (you
>might could locate it in the archives under the subject heading
"grammar
>survey").
>
>Basically, most folks felt that you should put the condition first
>because many users don't read the entire sentence.
>
>For instance, if you write: "Squeeze the trigger when the sights are
>aligned with the target," how many users will see only "squeeze the
>trigger" and fire away w/o lining up their shot properly?

FWIW, Christa, I think the subject heading you are thinking of was
called "Conditional Statements".  Your concise summary does, I think,
accurately reflect the majority of what people felt in that discussion.
My only addition would be: don't ever get too locked into one style or
format, there will always be valid reasons for making deviations.  Bill
appears to have one of those exceptions, in that some users may not know
where to perform the action called for.  Or to put it another way, if
the readers won't know that a trigger is on a firearm, you'd better get
that point across in some manner before you tell them to squeeze the
trigger.
-Matthew Craver,
Technical Documentation
Open Solutions Inc.
Mcraver -at- opensolutions -dot- com