Re: Style Guidelines for pull-down menus

["Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- EXPERSOFT -dot- COM>]

At 09:17 AM 8/6/99 -0500, Norman, Mary wrote:
>                We are trying to get some clarity about how to document a
>pull-down menu correctly.
>
>Our doc team is currently using ...
>
>Select Search, Search Menu Option.
>...another contractor suggested this: From the menu,
>choose x, y.
>... Which one ... is the "standard"?... Should we
>use "choose" over "select" ...?

Mary,

You'll probably get a slightly different opinion in each response.
That said, here's mine.

First, analyse your audience. My analysis of most users includes the
thoughts that: 1) If they do like to read, user manuals usually aren't
their first choice. 2) If they're reading this, they've aleady tried
it on their own and failed, so they're cranky to begin with.

Using right branching sentences (very important) and an economy of words
(also important) gives favor to:
      From the menu, <select/choose> Search > Find.

However, there's also a theory that says your user is in a hurry and
will only read the first three words in any instruction. If you buy
into it, "from the menu" is a waste of your users miniscule attention
span and your sentence becomes:
           <Select/choose> Search > Find from the menu.

Choose has never been my favorite word. I believe that users who are
reading technical information with a goal of retaining the information
subvocalize as they read. (I used to teach software apps in a classroom
setting, and I've seen them do this.) And I believe that "choose"
subvocalizes poorly, so I use "select".

That said, settle on standard wording that you and your team are
comfortable with (taking your audience into account, of course)
and be consistent.

HTH!

-Sue Gallagher               http://pw1.netcom.com/~gscale/susanwg/
sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com     http://www.expersoft.com

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