Re: What do you call something?

Subject: Re: What do you call something?
From: Clayton Oliver <coliver -at- lexmark -dot- com>
To: "TechWhirl List" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:23:42 -0400

Quoth Tammy Van Boening:
> Okay, you know how, for example, like in cartoons, when a character
talks,
> the words are contained in some kind of like balloon type object -
anyway,
> they are surrounded with a semi-oval shape border with a pointed end
that
> points to the character's mouth -
>
> what on earth would you call that in documentation? Please no joke - I
have
> several of these to describe - different colored ones mean different
things
> and rather than writing the red
> "thing-a-ma-jig/doodad/whatchyamacallit/doohickey" means this, I would
like
> to say the red <insert object name here> indicates that this is a
warning,
> the green < > means this has been processed, etc.

I'd go with "balloon" or "bubble." FWIW, Microsoft uses a similar device
in the Windows UI for alerts coming from the taskbar's notification area,
and the MSDN documentation refers to these as "balloons"
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511451.aspx).

- C.

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References:
What do you call something?: From: Spectrum Writing

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