Re: Typographical treatment of GUI components

["Dick Margulis " <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net>]

"Richard G. Combs"<richard -dot- combs -at- voyanttech -dot- com> wrote:
>

>
>This kind of step works fine without bolding:
>
>    From the Output list, choose...
>
>But this one? I think the component label begs for some kind of typographic
>distinction:
>
>    From the Select an output format list, choose...
>
>I prefer bold to italic. For one thing, it's easier to read on line.
>Quotation marks? Yuck! :-)


My approach to this situation is to violate a rule and risk the wrath of the TW gods. Even though I want to see the label on the GUI use sentence case ("Select an output format"), what I write in the procedure is this (using title case):

   From the Select an Output Format list, choose ...

Now I well know that THEY say the words in the procedure should reflect EXACTLY what is on the GUI. But y'know what? I like my way better. No bold, no italic, no font change, no graphic buttons. And I'm very conservative about caps in general (he says after typing two words in all caps in this paragraph); so this treatment does not generally give the page measles.

But that's just me.

Dick

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