TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Andreas Ramos writes:
> ...
> Instead of writing such cryptic short statements: abort, fail, retry,
> (and there were many of these in DOS), why not just write out in clear
> simple English: ...
Remember that these now-objectionable terms were coined when human-
computer input-output suffered from much less bandwidth. Some of us
go back to the days when a 10-cps tty was the state-of-the-art for
person-machine interaction. (I am not proposing a thread of "Oh, yeah!
I remember when we made the punched cards out of clay!" and the like.)
Terseness was a very high priority. MS-DOS descends from CP/M which
_was_ run with slow peripherals.
But that was then, this is now. I agree with Andreas. Now we _can_
write things out and we should. (I think Microsoft is trying.) I
also agree with Sue Stewart. If these words cause problems for the
users, we should change them. I am not saying that we can eliminate
all jargon. Useable programs and readable documents almost always
need to use specialized vocabulary for unfamiliar concepts. I am
also not proposing a political-correctness test for vocabulary.
But when the words we use make it harder for a significant group of
our users, we need to find different words.
-Fred
--
INTERNET: fred -at- boole -dot- com PHONE: (408) 526-3292 FAX: (408) 526-3055
USPS: Fred Jacobson / Boole & Babbage / 3131 Zanker Road / San Jose CA 95134
