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Karen West wonders: <<I usually follow the guidelines in the Microsoft
Manual of Style>>
My sympathies. <g>
<<focus - the window has focus, has regained focus; proc'd - when the
application has proc'd Command Mode; Are these terms okay to use in user
software documentation?>>
Neither word should ever appear in documentation unless the audience is
entirely composed of programmers, and even then, I'm not sure "proc'd" would
be obvious. I know "proc" is often used as shorthand for "procedure", and
thus infer that if you "proc" Command Mode, you invoke that mode by calling
a procedure, but I'm not at all comfortable with this.
Think of what you're trying to say from the user standpoint, and if no one
word works to communicate that concept, then don't try too hard to find a
single-word solution. Describe what the user sees and what it means to them
instead. For example, "you can now work in that window" or "you can now
switch to command mode by invoking ProcCmdMode" and so on.
--Geoff Hart, ghart -at- [delete]videotron -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur. (Oh! Was I
speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips
out.)--Anonymous
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