TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: Symbols in product names From:John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 28 Oct 2002 11:42:29 -0500
Only your legal department knows this answer.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
212-414-6656
"Be accurate...the 4am wakeup call you prevent could be your manager's"
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Patrick [mailto:susan -dot- patrick -at- fti-ibis -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 11:31 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Symbols in product names
Hello All,
I've got a question about writing unusual product names. When a product name
has symbols in it, do you have include the symbols in the name throughout
the user documentation?
Here's our situation:
We've got a software product name that's an acronym. Let's call it BOB,
short for Bucket Or Beachball. During the development process, someone in
Marketing discovered that there was already another, albeit unrelated,
product on the market called BOB. Our Marketing department decided to
differentiate us by writing BOB with bullets between each letter:
B<bullet>O<bullet>B. Fine for them, but now we're writing user documentation
and typing in all these bullets is becoming a pain, not to mention a
conversion nightmare. We are now embroiled in an interdepartmental debate
over whether the bullets are necessary within the user docs. Which do you
believe is correct?
a) Write the product name B<bullet>O<bullet>B every time, as Marketing
insists.
b) Write the product name B<bullet>O<bullet>B on its first appearance in
each book, then switch to BOB.
c) Write the product name BOB throughout each book, and leave the bullets in
the cover logo graphic only.
d) Something entirely different.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Buy ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 6.0, the most powerful SINGLE SOURCE HELP
AUTHORING TOOL for MS Word. SAVE $100 on the full version and $50 on the
upgrade. Offer ends 10/31/2002 (code: DTH102250). http://www.componentone.com/d2hlist1002
All-new RoboHelp X3 is now shipping! Get single sourcing, print-quality
documentation, conditional text and much more, in the most monumental
release ever. Save $100! Order online at http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
