Re: Style Guide vs. GUI terminology

[Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com>]

In article EFAA78F77E74D411A0F700508BDFEAD6044B23A2 -at- mlbmx9 -dot- corp -dot- harris -dot- com, kmccarte -at- harris -dot- com ("McCarter, Kim") writes:
>
>Our team is having a major disagreement that I hope you can help with.  Our
>department style guide states the following:
>When instructing the user to perform some action on the user interface, use the
>term "Select" rather than "Click," "Choose," or "Press."  
>Use "Click" only when the user must Right-click, to specify such.
>The only time Press is used is when the user must interact with the keyboard, as
>in "Press Enter."
>
>Recently, our development team created a lexicon of approved terms for the new
>user interfaces.  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.  It's clear that there is a
>choice and the user should select the indicated item.  We feel that using Select
>in some instances and Press in others would just muddy the waters and make our
>documentation look inconsistent (all of our legacy documentation uses Select).
>
>So...I appeal to TECHWR-L for answers/opinions.  Do you know of any
>authoritative source that dictates user actions according to GUI components?  Is
>this merely a matter of opinion?  Would we be wrong to stick with "Select" and
>keep our documentation consistent or are we doing the user a disservice and
>using terminology incorrectly (the Microsoft Computer Dictionary lists Select
>but not Press).
>

I think consistency in this matter is important, even if 
the reasoning to get to the preferred terms is different 
from different perspectives. I'm not sure I'd say that 
there is such standard terminology that you are using 
terms incorrectly but, for example, if you are documenting 
Microsoft products you may want to use terminology with 
which your users are already familiar.

Here at Sun, we use "select" for items in a list or radio 
buttons. We use "choose" for items in a menu. We use "click" 
for buttons (e.g., Cancel). We use "press" for keyboard keys 
(e.g., the Escape key).


*********************************************************************
Janice Gelb                  | Just speaking for me, not Sun. 
janice -dot- gelb -at- eng -dot- sun -dot- com      | http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/

        Editor -- someone who knows that "carpe diem" 
                  does not mean "fish of the day."




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