RE: What do you assume as basic audience vocabulary?

Subject: RE: What do you assume as basic audience vocabulary?
From: "Kim McGarghan" <kmcgarghan -at- nssolutions -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 13:17:02 -0500

Okay. Winston Churchill also advocated using the simple $0.05 words rather
than the more expensive ones. <grin>

BUT

Here's where the plot thickens:

There are important differences (I am told) between "initialize" and
"format". There are even more important differences between the concepts
when you speak of UNIX versus Windows, both of which are used by my users.
I'm quasi-techie, though, so I sometimes have to rely on my developers to
make me understand it enough that I can make my users understand it.

***

If I understand the distinctions:

Formatting overwrites a disk, preparing it to be written to.
Initialization not only overwrites a disk, it also lays down a file system.

Initialization can only be done once; thereafter it is a _re_initialization.

***

Our compromise is that we're now changing everything to read
"initialize/format", which is inelegant but which seems to suit the purposes
of my developers and my technical editor.

If anyone out there can add to, or correct my understanding of, the
distinctions, I'd be grateful.


-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Byfield [mailto:bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 1:12 PM
To: kmcgarghan -at- nssolutions -dot- com
Cc: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: What do you assume as basic audience vocabulary?


Bruce Byfield wrote:

<snip>

> In other words, unless "initialize" carries some important meaning
> than "format" doesn't, don't use it. I can't see that it does, but I
> doubt I know the whole context.


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