One of the reasons I think technical writers should branch out into
usability is that such things often go unnoticed, and fixing them is a
skill that directly relates to the skillset of communicating with
users. Users need consistency, not "creativity" in randomly naming
buttons, commands, and so on. I see inconsistency quite a bit, and most
of my comments returned to engineers are fixes in that area.
> Years ago I was documenting a program for a mobile radio computer.
> As I
> went through the program, I started noticing that the buttons used
> for
> various functions (think DOS application screens) varied from screen
> to
> screen. For example, Print might be F6 on one screen, but F8 on
> another, and so on.
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