Re: consistency in terminology--methods

["Sella Rush" <sellar -at- mail -dot- apptechsys -dot- com>]

It looks like most people rate consistency pretty high.  What I'm finding
interesting are the varied reasons for why people rate it where they do.

I based my question (and my reasoning) on expediency.  If we had unlimited
time and budget, of course consistency would be part of the package.  But
what happens when your time frame's been cut in half, the developers are
still working on the app, and the project's starting to eat into profits? At
what point does consistency jump out the window?

Re Don Bush's article, I find it hard to believe that anyone would agree
with the statement:  "It is better to be consistently wrong than not to be
consistent."  If information's wrong, then it's worthless.

I also tend to disregard the claims of "good writing", as defined by variety
in phrasing and graceful prose, when it comes to straight help or reference
material.  Here the audience is not looking for an interesting read, in fact
is looking to read as little as possible.

But we've all seen circumstances where good writing might ease the pain of
understanding a difficult concept such as, say, recursion (ugh).  Or when
our audience is novice level.  (The "spoon full of sugar" method.)  Again,
though, we're talking about conceptual subjects, where more than a line or
two of text is needed.

Methods for maintaining consistency?

On a big job, I write down phrasing when I notice it's tending to drift.  On
a small job, like the 18-topic help I just wrote, I just kept an awareness
in my mind of the rocky phrases, and then went through it at the end to make
it consistent.

Often I don't know what my final phrasing will be at the beginning of a job.
So I just keep track of the variations, and then at some point I make a
decision and go from there--although I often revise that decision because I
make it too soon.  The biggest reasons for deciding one way or another are:
(1) accuracy
(2) common use (as someone pointed out, a control is commonly said to be
defined by a programmer and set by a user)
(3) instances where the term is used in another context (for example, I
would choose not to say "assign permissions" if elsewhere in the document I
say "assign users" in a different context)

My most common method for fixing consistency issues is search and replace
(in Word).  Once I identify that the phrase involves the word "permissions",
I can quickly search for it.  And in many cases, an entire phrase can be
replaced.  You have to be very careful with this, however.

Sella Rush
mailto:sellar -at- apptechsys -dot- com
Applied Technical Systems (ATS)
Silverdale, Washington
Developers of the CCM Database
Demo:  www.apptechsys.com/demo