Re: Command nomenclature

[Yvonne DeGraw <yvonne -at- SILCOM -dot- COM>]

Andrew F. Swartz <aswartz -at- harlequin -dot- co -dot- uk> wrote:
>I did a small survey of my company's users (mostly police officers) and
>found that over half didn't understand the convention Yvonne DeGraw
>suggests: "Choose File-->Open." However, we explain the convention only in
>the preface, and I suspect not many readers look at prefaces. I look
>forward to trying Yvonne's suggestion of explaining the convention on first
>use of each chapter. Since this is one of the most common sorts of
>instructions in a software user manual, it seems like it's worth taking the
>time to figure out the best wording.

Hmmm, police officers ... my dad was a police officer. If you are planning
to test different wordings, I'd test my "novice computer user" style, which
is (with *s around bolded text):

  Choose the *File-->Open* menu item.

And on first use in each chapter:

  Choose the *File-->Open* menu item. (In this book, *File-->Open* means
  you should pull down the *File* menu and choose the *Open* option.)

I'd love to hear the results of any testing you do.

Also, I've had better luck getting people to read a preface when I call it
something like "Welcome!".
Yvonne DeGraw, Technical Services     o Technical Writing
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