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Gabrielle Isenbrand's group is <<... having an internal discussion about
terminology for ... a button that allows the user to immediately terminate a
process within our program. This process might have been manually initiated
by the user, or
might have started automatically by schedule. Reasons for stopping the
process can vary and do not always imply failure or problems. Right now the
button is labeled "Abort". One faction says that "abort" implies an internal
system error, and so is not the correct term. "Stop" or "Cancel" would be
more appropriate. The other faction says that "abort" is fine. (For purposes
of this discussion, we are excluding the political/cultural dimensions of
the term!)>>
I wouldn't exclude the political/cultural dimensions of the wording out of
hand, since they're an important part of any audience analysis. This issue
has come up every now and then here and in copyediting-l, and each time
there's been enough opposition to the word "abort" (on a personal level, not
necessarily out of knee-jerk political correctness) that I wouldn't no
longer accept use of the word "abort" without an awfully compelling reason.
"Cancel" is the standard button in most operating systems for stopping
something before you begin, but it's also common for stopping something once
it's already begun; even if for that reason alone, I'd stick with "Cancel".
