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Subject:Re: Friday-type questions From:Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 22 Mar 2002 16:57:46 -0800 (PST)
<<
A recent (Adobe Photoshop v6.0, If I recall) user manual invited me
to 'check out' some facet of the program. This was unexpected. Do
others among you use 'check out' to mean refer to? Is this now
acceptable form in print?>>
Even if this phrase is now more acceptable, you might want to
consider avoiding it if your documents are translated. We are
slowly getting trained by our localization people to avoid
phrases like this that can lead to confusion for translators
and non-native English speakers. Not only is this a relatively
slang phrase, even if it is getting to be more accepted, but
we try to avoid using words that are both nouns and verbs in
the same document to avoid confusion. So, for example, if
your document talks about checking a checkbox or the like,
you'd probably want to avoid this phrase.
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Janice Gelb | Just speaking for me, not Sun.
janice -dot- gelb -at- eng -dot- sun -dot- com | http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/
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