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Subject:RE: Single Spacing: Brain vs body From:Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 14 May 2004 07:33:40 -0700 (PDT)
David Chinell wrote:
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I'm still not convinced that bolding interface element names
helps anybody, because I haven't read any studies that show
people's eye's actually track that way, that their eyes
actually skip from bolded word to bolded word, while their
minds formulate a sentence like: Changing a file type,
changing a file type, hmmm... So! File then Export then pick
from a list of types.
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Well, when I'm going over how-tos, I skip around to bolded items. But that's just me. I might do it because I know the intended purpose of that bolding and I'm just too lazy to read the entire sentence.
We started using bold for the names of interface elements because some of those names are several words long and made it difficult to read some setences no matter how hard we try to rewrite them. So a sentence like:
Select the column you want from the These columns are available table.
bolding suddenly becomes useful in helping the reader, even on a subconscious level, to more easily understand what the sentence is saying....right?
Select the column you want from the <b>These columns are available</b> table.
Okay, admittedly, the example isn't all that great, but you get my meaning.....I hope.
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