Re: Need wording help, please

[Richard Yanowitz <ryanowit -at- NYCT -dot- NET>]

At 11:32 AM 5/5/98 -0700, Parks, Beverly wrote:
>The search options are visible only when the number of items in the
>table exceeds the visible area of the table (and thus a scroll bar would
>appear, also).

This is your summary to us, not to your manual readers.  Why the
difference?  Tighten the language, sure.  But if you think this
communicates effectively to the list, why should something else be better
for your manual audience?

In particular, the parenthesis is a big help (maybe better as something
like: "so that the scroll bar appears").  The preceding part I don't
understand in any form, but perhaps it would make sense if I were looking
at the illustration.

Is it the case that when the scroll bar doesn't appear, the software
designers want users to eyeball the screen instead of searching?  This
doesn't seem too helpful unless there are minimal data (3? 6?) that fit
into a single display.  If so, you might try something like: "If [x
software] can't fit all data on the display, you will see (a) a horizontal
scrollbar and (b) three buttons to help you find a specific item."  Edit
that for accuracy and spiff up the formatting.

Good luck.
Richard Yanowitz, NYC
ryanowitz -at- bigfoot -dot- com

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