RE: Enabled ... Active ... "Enterable" ... yeesh.

["Michael West" <mwest -at- oz -dot- quest -dot- com>]

Beth Scudder wrote:
>
>
> Help!
> I know that, fairly recently, there was some discussion on what to call an
> enabled field - a field into which it is possible to make an entry.
> I cannot, of course, *find* the relevant e-mail, either in my own archives
> or in the ones on the techwr-l site



Hi Beth,

The thread you are looking for was titled < RE: Need another word for
"enterable" >

Some of the suggestions were "editable," "updatable," and "maintainable."

If I might make a suggestion, I would ask the writer to consider what purpose
it serves to say "The next available line becomes enabled" (or "available" or
whatever). It may be true, but is it useful?

Would it not be more efficient simply to give the instruction for going to
the next field? Does making a separate point about the field becoming
available really add anything to the user's understanding of what to do?

Maybe yes, maybe no. The writer can make the determination easier than I can.
But I do know that descriptive material in procedural steps is often
gratuitous and not really useful, and this sounds like a possible candidate
for replacement by an instruction rather than a description.

Not to belabor the point, but here is an example of what I mean. Consider
this pair of instructions (just off the top off my head):

1. Click Print. The Print dialog appears.
2. Set the print options, and then click OK.

Many writers and editors would prefer to omit the second sentence of step 1,
producing something like this:

1. Click Print.
2. In the Print dialog, set the print options, and then click OK.

In other words, by re-writing the description as an instruction, the
integrity of the procedure list is preserved. Just something to consider.

Mike West
Melbourne, Australia




>