RE: Boolean value: Whether or Not or IF

Subject: RE: Boolean value: Whether or Not or IF
From: "Andrew Warren" <awarren -at- synaptics -dot- com>
To: "Rob Hudson" <caveatrob -at- gmail -dot- com>, "techwr-l List" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:55:55 -0700

Rob Hudson wrote:

> If you're describing a boolean column in a document, for example
> "EnableBackButton," would you describe it as:
>
> "Whether or not the back button should appear on the screen" or
> "If the back button should appear on the screen" or
> "Should the back button appear on the screen?"

Rob:

Without the entire context, it's hard to choose an exact wording; you need something that fits in the space allotted, that's parallel with all the other features you're documenting, maybe that translates well into other languages, etc. I wouldn't use any of those three choices, though.

And -- no offense to Sue and others who suggested it -- I'm also not a big fan of giving up and just calling the list of choices a "description". I want to see things like "CITY: The city in which the customer lives", not "CITY: Denver if the customer lives in Denver, Los Angeles if the customer lives in Los Angeles, etc."

Anyway... For me, your last example -- the question -- is just too chatty. Maybe it could work for other people, though.

Your first two examples are trying to say the same thing -- "Whether the button should appear" -- but they use the wrong words. "Whether or not" is best used when the meaning is "regardless", and "if" is ambiguous: it can mean "whether", but it can also mean "ONLY if".

If those first two examples fit very well with your context, you can just replace "if" with "whether":

EnableBackButton:
Controls whether the Back button should appear on the screen

or clean it up a bit, maybe like this:

EnableBackButton:
Controls the visibility of the Back button

-Andrew

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References:
Boolean value: Whether or Not or IF: From: Rob Hudson

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