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>According to their lexicon, when instructing a user to take
>action on a button (Ok, Cancel, Save, etc) on the user interface, we
>should use
>"Press" rather than "Select" since the button does not have a deselect state.
>We feel this is inaccurate because Press indicates a physical action when the
>only physical action the user is taking is clicking a mouse button on a
>graphical representation of a button on the user interface. We think that
>Select works fine for buttons, menu items, etc.
"Select" traditionally means to indicate an object to the computer that
you want to perform an action on. Thus, you select text and then choose a
new font for it.
"Press" refers (as your department guide says) mainly to pressing a
physical key on the keyboard.
"Click" is the action of moving the mouse pointer over an on-screen
object and pressing the mouse key. Microsoft also uses this for choosing
a menu command, Apple does not.
"Choose" is what you do when you - well, choose a command from a menu.
According to Apple, this is the preferred usage (which makes sense),
Microsoft accepts it but prefers "click". None of them allows "select".
In your case, the clear choice that is "click a button" (or, if you
prefer, "click on a button"). Select, press, or other terms would be non-
standard.
Some helpful standard works would be the Macintosh Human Interface Guide
and the Microsoft Manual of Style, both of which happen to agree on this
issue.
Hope this helps
Jan Henning
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Jan Henning
ROSEMANN & LAURIDSEN GMBH
Am Schlossberg 14, D-82547 Eurasburg, Germany
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