Re: Labels on forms: Abbreviate or use symbols?

Subject: Re: Labels on forms: Abbreviate or use symbols?
From: "Meryl R. Cohen" <merylster -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com, Cheryl Magadieu <cmagadieu -at- gmail -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:10:53 -0500

Maybe I'm missing something in your question. Why don't you simply have a
column header that takes up two lines?

Meryl

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 10:57 AM, Cheryl Magadieu <cmagadieu -at- gmail -dot- com>wrote:

> My company's usability standards team has a question about the style for
> abbreviations and symbols in form labels. Our company's product is online,
> and the user interface often uses two-column tables to display forms. The
> forms include sections where users enter data such as patient names,
> addresses, and phone numbers. Sometimes the form labels are so long that we
> can't fit them into the allotted space without abbreviating them or using
> symbols. For example, one label is "Patient Account Number." We're debating
> whether to abbreviate it as "Patient Account No." or to use the pound
> symbol: "Patient Account #". Which usage do you think would be more
> familiar
> to users, both in the U.S. as well as internationally? I checked a few
> style
> guides to see if they provide any guidance, but the only guidance I could
> find was to avoid abbreviations whenever possible.
>
> Cheryl
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
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References:
Labels on forms: Abbreviate or use symbols?: From: Cheryl Magadieu

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