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I currently use emphasis styles for screen names, field labels and links/buttons etc. I just wanted to inquire whether is a standard for navigation labels on behalf of our Product Marketing Manager who was wondering if there was such a thing.
Ron Hearn
Documentation Specialist
Central 1 Credit Union
1441 Creekside Drive
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
V6J 4S7
rhearn -at- central1 -dot- com
Tel: 604.730.6391
Fax: 604.730-7792
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+rhearn=cucbc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+rhearn=cucbc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Margaret Cekis
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 8:36 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: FW: Convention for navigation labels in documentation
Ron Hearn asked about "Convention for navigation labels in documentation"
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Ron:
In systems where you can specify "Character" styles, such as FrameMaker and Word, I define an "Emphasis" style that I use for screen names, field labels, and navigation terms. I use the same font as the body text, but I make the emphasized terms bold but one font size smaller than the text font.
For example, if the text font is 12 pt Arial, I make the emphasis font 11 pt bold. It makes the label terms stand out, but has less of the "ransom note"
effect of using bold in the same font size.
My suggestion is to take a block of about 3 or 4 paragraphs of typical text from one of the applications you're documenting that has several label-type terms scattered through it, and try different font size and style combinations until you find one that looks good to you. Then put it into your templates and make it your style standard. Oh, and give the emphasis font that you decide on an easy-to-use character short cut. (I use Ctrl-e.) YMMV Margaret Cekis, Johns Creek GA
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