[austechwriter] Sec Unclassified; RE: Re: Enter vs. Type and Read Me First recommendation
- From: "Muzrimas, Diana MS" <Diana.Muzrimas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "'austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 13:11:06 +1000
Yes, as I said "it will depend on the situation"!! I'm sure Wendy will get
feedback from an appropriate sampling of intended users, if she needs to.
And yes, a reasonable technical communicator will try to avoid the trap you
speak of! Although, part of that trap can easily be that the "knowledgeable
person" may be a Technical Communicator looking for arguments to support
their own preferences, and not those of the intended audience.
And we Technical Communicators are, unfortunately, not always in the lucky
position of dictating whose influence we listen to (sometimes the audience
can be the person who pays you to do the work, and not the intended users
who you'd prefer to write for)....
And, if the audience were African pygmy's then 'draw' might be the term, or
more accurately some African term I've never heard of :-)
And, maybe for blind people 'say'...
...it will depend on the situation.
Diana
-----Original Message-----
From: Melanie Kendell [mailto:Melanie.Kendell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, 6 August 2003 11:48
To: 'austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [austechwriter] Re: Sec Unclassified; RE: Re: Enter vs. Type
and Read Me First recommendation
I agree with most of what you say Diana, my only issue is with "at least
some of the people Wendy are working for have indicated a preference for the
use of 'Enter'".
This should only be an influence if these people she is working for are:
* the same as
* representative of
* advocates of
the intended readers of the information.
All too often, a knowledgeable person's preferences are allowed to influence
terminology without reference to how the intended users, who may be African
pigmys for all we on this list know, will react to that terminology. It is
too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that everyone else is familiar
with something because you have been imersed in a particular environment for
a long time.
That said, an awful lot of people will be comfortable with 'Enter' - but it
ain't necessarily so :)
-Melanie Kendell
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Muzrimas, Diana MS [mailto:Diana.Muzrimas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, 6 August 2003 11:19 AM
> To: 'austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
> Subject: [austechwriter] Sec Unclassified; RE: Re: Enter vs. Type and
> Read Me First recommendation
>
>
> I agree with Bruce.
> By the sound of Wendy's original question, at least some of
> the people Wendy
> are working for have indicated a preference for the use of 'Enter'.
>
> Confusion also can arise when you have fields, buttons or
> keys in particular
> application that are named "Type". So, as always, it will
> depend on the
> situation.
>
> And, in my own experience with a variety of environments and
> users, I've not
> found any problem with using 'enter' instead of 'type'. The
> audiences I've
> come across seem to have little problem interchanging the two
> words, 'type'
> and 'enter'. They get the correct meaning from the context
> that the words
> have been used in.
>
> It's probably more of an issue for detail people, such as we Technical
> Communicators!
>
> Diana
**************************************************
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.freelist.org/archives/austechwriter
To contact the list administrator, send a message to
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************
Other related posts:
