Thanks Michael.
We supposedly target the US and use US spelling and capitalisation, but the
software and doco are sold world-wide. Most of my younger, non-native-English
speakers didn't think Toc (in long or short versions) was helpful.
The Tocs that I refer to have links to the topics. As soon as someone clicks on
my message, they'll know what it is that they see.
I've been told that programs have lists, not documentation. There's some
different opinions at play here.
Bye...
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Lewis
Sent: Thursday, 2 March 2017 2:09 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: A question of a name: table of contents or contents list
I don't think I've ever seen a PC _with_ a table of contents . . .
Sorry about that; couldn't resist!
To the issue: The Anglophone world has been using Table of Contents for some
centuries - and continues to use it. I can't imagine that any user would be
bamboozled by the term, whereas many older users might be.
However, the question is whether the list in your example is, genuinely, a ToC.
Does it have page numbers, or is it a series of hotlinks, or neither? If no
page numbers, it's not a traditional ToC, so you run a (probably slight) risk
of causing (probably minor) problems for some users. So you might like to come
up with an entirely different term, perhaps along the lines of "Document Map"
or "List of sections".
Final thought: your reference to non-native-English speakers prompts me to ask
whether your target audience is primarily native speakers - do you have any
information about that? (USA is likely to have fewer than a comparable audience
in Australia.)
- Michael Lewis
On 2017-03-02 12:40, Janet Taylor wrote:
I am giving this message on my documentation pages that are opened on a PC
without a table of contents:
Show Contents List (the capitals are because it's for mostly American readers)
I'm sure you can guess what it means.
I selected these words after doing a survey of my mostly young and
non-native-English speaking colleagues. (Most favoured a graphic but I wasn't
willing to do that .)
Now I'm being asked to change it to: Table of contents
No action, just the name.
I thought Table of contents was a name that most of us older people might use
but I've been shown many examples of Table of contents in use by large
organisations (Apple being one of them).
Could I have your opinion please?
