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SW is not our main business (our SW "product" is a tool that our
customers use to configure and install our main product), so to be
frank we don't expend as much effort on our SW docs as we do
on the rest of our products, but one convention we do follow is to
not pepper the instructions with the names of dialogs or windows
over and over again. The bolded title is used once at the beginning
of the instruction, and thereafter the text refers only to its contents,
says "this tab," or something along those lines. We also make heavy
use of screen caps, numbered callouts and fragmented statements
(example: if there's a button called "Run," there's a numbered arrow
pointing at it in the screen cap, and below the figure a description
that says "(#) does blahblahblah," rather than "Run button: does
blahblahblah").
Gene Kim-Eng
"Chuck Martin" <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com> wrote in message news:...
>
> The bolding catches users' eyes (like links on a web page), and too much
> bolding distracts them from important points. More often than not, the
> most important points are going to be your procedural text; users are
> reading the docs because thay can't figure out from the interface how to
> get a particular task done. If the interaction points are the only ones
> bolded, users can just scan the bolded text and get a very good idea of
> what to do without even reading comprehensively.
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