RE: Open vs Appear, Yet Again (was: "RE: WG: Newbie question - GUI terminology")

["Sarah Davies" <Sarah -dot- Davies -at- macrovision -dot- com>]

Janice Gelb wrote: 

As for "opens," I've been trying to pin down why it bothers me and I
haven't been able to come up with a grammar-related explanation.
Somehow, although I have no problem with something like "Choosing Print
from the File menu opens the Print dialog box," the phrase "The Print
dialog box opens" seems awkward to me.

****
It bothers me as well, and it's because I see a phrase such as "The
Print dialog box opens" and think, "OK, opens *what*?". The verb "to
open" is one that requires both subject and object for it to make sense
to me. To return to the comment of what you'd do with a real window, you
probably wouldn't refer to "the window opens" - i.e. implying a
spontaneous action. You'd say "Bob opens the window".

Of course, there are exceptions. Your mileage may vary (and I think
we've already seen that it does, quite considerably ;-) ). Personally, I
prefer "appears", which fortuitously is what our Style Guide dictates
(with the option for "opens" and never ever ever "displays").

Sarah


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