Re: Phrasing question in documentation

Subject: Re: Phrasing question in documentation
From: Matthew Hunt <morfran -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: litlfrog -at- gmail -dot- com, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 13:26:21 -0700 (PDT)







I'd call it something catchy like:
"Report from week of"
And lobby the programmers to only allow Mondays to be selected. For me, the real confusion is in letting users select dates that have no meaning.
Matt.



------ Original message------From: Joe WeinmunsonDate: Tue, 1 Sep 2015 02:43To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com;Subject:Phrasing question in documentation
Our programmers recently added a new financial report called "PaymentsSummary" to the business software we sell. One of the menu options on thereport is misleading and I'm looking for advice on what to call it. Theoption is currently labeled "Start Date," but the program doesn't actuallyinterpret that as "start adding up payments beginning on this date." Thereport goes by weeks interpreted as beginning on a Monday. Two examples:A) I run a report with a Start Date of Thursday, Feb 5 and tell the programto group payments by weeks. I get a list of payments made in differentformats (Checks, Visa, MC, direct debit, etc.) for the week of 2/2â2/8,2/9â2/15, 2/16â2/22, etc. See, the "start date" I chose, 2/5 falls in theweek of 2/2 through 2/8.B) I run the report with the same Start Date of Thursday, Feb 5, but thistime I tell the program to group payments by days. I now get the list ofpayments in the same format, but for Monday 2/2, Tuesday 2/3, 2/4, 2/5,2/6, and Weekend (2/7â2/8).It took ME a couple of minutes to understand how this works when theprogrammer explained it to me; it's going to really puzzle our users and Iwant to get down on tech support calls by changing what we call the "StartDate" option. "Week w/ Date"? "Date Falls In Week"?-- Joe WeinmunsonâWhat you read when you donât have to determines what you will be when youcanât help it.â--Oscar Wilde^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Learn more about Adobe Technical Communication Suite (2015 Release) | http://bit.ly/1FR7zNW^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as morfran -at- gmail -dot- com -dot- To unsubscribe send a blank email totechwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- comSend administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visithttp://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and info.Looking for articles on Technical Communications? Head over to our online magazine at http://techwhirl.comLooking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions? Search our public email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives

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