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Re: Table layout - Which way is best?

Subject: Re: Table layout - Which way is best?
From: "William Sherman" <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 21:12:33 -0400

I see I cut that off a bit too soon this morning.


These tables are the callouts for a locator illustration or photograph showing parts of a machine. The illustration or picture is full width and the table/list is below usually. These have been set up as tables (as in Word or FrameMaker tables) although technically they would be a list since there is no header to define the columns and no column on the left defining what each is. These were set up years ago, and those doing it used tables as they were easy to do. Some books were set up with borders around the items and callout numbers, some where, and some were with a single outside border around all. All of this depends on the book and who did it, as we are talking hundreds of these over the course of 25 years or so. And some had several styles within the same book.

We don't have them online and I didn't see anything online that I could point to for a visual example.

But what I have noticed is that if you take this list:

1 Frame

2 Track

3 Undercarriage

4 Mast

5 Cab

6 Air Tank

7 Engine

8 Compressor

9 Stairs

10 Egress ladder

11 Hydraulic Tank

12 Oil filters


and use MS Word's convert text to table tool, it will come out (left - right in case this doesn't come across)

[ picture with callout numbers and leader lines ]

1 Frame
2 Track

3 Undercarriage
4 Mast

5 Cab
6 Air Tank

7 Engine
8 Compressor

9 Stairs
10 Egress ladder

11 Hydraulic Tank
12 Oil filters




which may be what has happened in these other locations. I should have checked FrameMaker's conversion before I came home but forgot. You would think we would have a global style guide for a global company, but I swear, this company works like a bunch of guys sketching with chalk on the floor of a double car garage in suburbia sometimes. So the corporate style guide doesn't cover this and that is the big issue.

I just became aware of this a few weeks ago when another group took one of our FrameMaker books and outsourced it to be converted to XML for a huge upcoming project.

When our local team got a partial draft to see how things were going, I discovered the left - right numbering sequence.

I immediately questioned it and was told it had to do with the conversion of XML. I quickly disproved that with an XML version of (1-6 down, then 7-12 down)


[ picture with callout numbers and leader lines ]

1 Frame

2 Track

3 Undercarriage

4 Mast

5 Cab

6 Air Tank
7 Engine

8 Compressor

9 Stairs

10 Egress ladder

11 Hydraulic Tank

12 Oil filters





A new excuse came up that the left - right was how it was done in Europe and they are dictating our style, yet nowhere do I find this style listed. So before doing battle, I was looking for some ammo. I think a corporation style guide has been taken over by branding people more concerned we have the correct color on the cover than what the content is inside. And so they haven't felt this is important, thus why it is apparently missing from what little style guide I have found.

And these are paper books delivered to the customers, but they are also in PDF on an internal knowledge base, so how they appear on a monitor is secondary.




----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2015 1:31 PM
Subject: Re: Table layout - Which way is best?


If this is the presentation of a drawing, and the items pertaining to it are numbered in the drawing, and each item is identified in a list below the drawing, I can see that William's preferred vertical approach is correct, because the reader takes this action:

1. See item in drawing
2. Observe item number.
3. Find item, in numerical order in the list.

The two-column presentation is aesthetically appealing if the drawing is more twice as wide as the widest name in the list.

The horizontal approach makes sense only if the list is to be maintained automatically, and the automatic method is unable to deal with producing the vertical approach. This method would be correct only if the list were (1) frequently modified and (2) infrequently read. The "infrequently read" approach to documentation is generally assumed to apply to ships, where the manuals are expected to weigh some small fraction of the ship's total tonnage, but rarely, if ever, to acquire eyetracks upon the pages.


On Mon, 11 May 2015 12:08:21 -0400, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> wrote:

I wouldn't use a table for that since the rows and columns don't
represent relationships among the items. It's just a lot of
time-consuming formattting that conveys no information.

To consolidate the list when the list items are short, you could use
multiple columns.

Consolidating a list by putting multiple list items on each line
instead looks amateurish to me.

If a style guide addressed that, I'd expect it to be covered under
lists, not tables.

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 3:38 AM, William Sherman
<bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com> wrote:
At work, there have been a couple of people who have suddenly changed the
directions of tables in our books.

Currently, we have a table that goes vertical in the first pair of columns,
then vertical in the second pair of columns.

1 Main Body 4 Undercarriage
2 Work Access 5 Track System
3. Power Plant 6 Operator Cab


What they have done is go left right, then down.

1 Main Body 2 Work Access
3 Power Plant 4 Undercarriage
5 Track System 6 Operator Cab

Now on something short, probably most don't see an issue but several tables
that we have like this has 30 or more items called out.

I have been trying to find something that gives a rule for this we can point
to. I am sure I've heard of studies that down the first set, then down the
second set (newspaper column style or regular multi-column style text) is
the recommended and easiest to read, but I just can't find that now. Looking
through Chicago Manual of Style, I'm apparently missing it if it is in
there.

Searching tables styles or layouts on the Internet gets me a lot of
furniture links.

Unfortunately, our style guide doesn't address this and I believe that they
may decide to actually put this into the style guide, since one is a manger
in another group.

Anyone have any links or references?
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Follow-Ups:

References:
Not content with the definitions for "content": From: Tony Chung
Table layout - Which way is best?: From: William Sherman
Re: Table layout - Which way is best?: From: Robert Lauriston
Re: Table layout - Which way is best?: From: Peter Neilson

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