Re: FW: Referring to an unnamed button with three dots

[Lou Quillio <public -at- quillio -dot- com>]

Rochelle McAndrews wrote:
> It can't hurt to help people expand their vocabularies by providing a 'new'
> word and using it in context (as indicated in the part of my post that you
> failed to include ;o))
> 
> "...click the square ellipsis button [...] adjacent to the File Name field."
> 
> Some people may even appreciate learning that the 'agreed upon symbol' for
> the object "three dots in a row" is known as an ellipsis.

I know what you're saying.  Still, I reckon it a little differently.

First, I don't think the term "ellipsis" is ripe for a comeback.  I
think there are reasons we (well, they, the others) don't use it.
It's confusing.  Heck, it's literally Greek.  The only similar
English term, "ellipse", is unrelated.  IMO, "dot-dot-dot" has --
sadly -- won, and I think that's permanent.  "Suspension point", anyone?

Second, using the ellipsis in UIs to signify what any normal person
thinks of as a "Browse" function was pretty arbitrary in the first
place.  Browsing for a file hasn't much to do with "any omitted part
of speech that is understood, i.e., the omission is intentional."

So here we are bending over backwards to call this "Browse" button
an "ellipsis", and it doesn't even function as ellipses do in the
print sense.  We just _might_ be making things harder, people.

For my money, the button should be marked "Browse".  If that's
impossible, I say that "..." (Unicode entity 8230 [decimal] or 2026
[hex]) should be defined to mean "Browse" in the UI context, and be
done.

But that's just my money.

(Another item for the Glossary:  "adjacent to" means "next to".) ;)

LQ

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