atw: Re: Mistakes that stop you in your tracks

Howard said:
> Here's a sentence that really stopped me in my tracks when I was editing
> yesterday: 'The dialog box has three buttons, labelled Save and Cancel'.
>
> It turned out that there used to be a third (Delete) button. That was
then
> itself deleted and the author then removed the reference to Delete, but
> forgot to change the 'three'. Seems obvious enough when it's explained,
> but it had me puzzled for a while.

This is quite a common problems with manuals that are old and
much updated. In this case you could rewrite to avoid the problem
("The dialog box has buttons labelled Save and Cancel.").

Another more futuristic solution would be if publishing software
allowed us to tag items in a list and generate the word that
represents the number of items. (Just as we use cross-references
to generate a phrase containing a heading and page number.)

So this sentence:

"Our four weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost
fanatical devotion to the Pope."

... might be marked up like this:

"Our <xref refid="weaponlist"> weapons are <el
id="weaponlist"><eli>fear</eli>, <eli>surprise</eli>, <eli>ruthless
efficiency</eli>, and <eli>an almost fanatical devotion to the
Pope</eli></el>."

If a new item is added to the list, the cross-reference is automatically
updated from four to five.

"Our *five* weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost
fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms."

Good idea, or over-engineering?

Stuart

**************************************************
To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to 
austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to 
austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field.

To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field.

To search the austechwriter archives, go to 
www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter

To contact the list administrator, send a message to 
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************

Other related posts: