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"Richard G. Combs" <richard -dot- combs -at- voyanttech -dot- com> wrote:
> David Chinell wrote:
>
> > Does anyone have any information to support (or not) bolding
> > GUI component names in printed reference manuals or Help
> > systems?
>
> As various responders have made clear, there are advantages and
> disadvantages. It makes the page look rather busy. OTOH, it makes it easier
> to skim a procedure.
>
> I resisted bolding GUI components for a long time (sometimes winning and
> sometimes losing that argument). I finally embraced bolding when I began
> encountering interfaces with sentence case (or all lower case), "natural
> language" labels.
>
We have now granted permission to writers to use initial
caps for such items even if the capitalization does not
precisely match the GUI (to quote from our style guide)
"*only* to increase the readability of running text."
Our Editorial Forum decided that users would probably
not be as confused by init caps in the documentation not
precisely matching the capitalization in the GUI as they
would be by trying to pick out the GUI item name in
running text if it was in lowercase. But we still thought
that bolding was not the answer for the reasons I gave
previously.
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