Re: Username or user name (generalized)

[Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>]

Steven,

See "The White Knight's Tale" in _Through the Looking-Glass_ for the 
ultimate guidance in thinking about such issues.

Here's where I come down on this, fully acknowledging that I'm in the 
minority and may be asked to hand in my tech writer's union card. Oh, 
that's right: I don't have one. Ah well.

I agree with the practice of using Caps and Lowercase in the doc, no 
quotes, no font changes, no funky stuff, to refer to on-screen labels 
and controls. The Update button is a good example. For a more 
complicated example, the Word Print dialog has a radiobutton labeled, 
"Current page." I would say in doc, if I had any reason to, "Select 
Current Page." That is, for a multiword label that appears in sentence 
case on the UI, I would change it to title case in the doc. This is not 
a _logical_ policy that I insist everyone else in the world should 
follow; it's just the way I _prefer_ to handle it (when I'm making the 
rules).

However, I disagree with your new policy of changing the _contents_ of 
the labels (other than case). If the label on the UI is "Username," then 
the word I use in the doc is "Username"--not "User Name." If the label 
is "UserID," then the doc says, "UserID"--not "User Name" or "User ID" 
or anything else that is spelled or spaced differently.

My tuppence.

Dick



Steven Jong wrote: