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Subject:Re: Quote Marks From:Bonni Graham <bonnig -at- IX -dot- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 10 Jan 1996 10:56:32 -0800
Tracy asked:
>So, while we're all here, let's come up with a good way to do this.
>I've used italics for things the user types, small caps for keys
>(such as ENTER or F3), bold for menu commands. I'm not saying
>these are best; just that this is what I've used. And the punctuation
>situation has always bothered me. What does everybody else do?
I've used bold for menus and strings of user-entered text (unless
they're really long, then I give 'em their own paragraph in a
monospaced face) and keypress fonts for individual keys, where I can
(bold if I can't use a keypress font).
I know this tends toward the raisin-cookie effect, as its been called
before on this list. I don't know that that's a bad thing, though --
I've seen people read manuals where all they do is look for the bold
stuff and maybe skim the words immediately on either side.
YMMV -- have the usability folks looked into this at all?
--
Bonni Graham
Manual Labour
bonnig -at- ix -dot- netcom -dot- com