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.
Subject:what to use as sample text From:Mary Howe/Rick Stein <thunder -at- IDIR -dot- NET> Date:Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:38:35 -0600
OK, this isn't a major theoretical question. I'm writing a user manual
for a MS Access add-in. The manual will have lots of screen shots
showing fields in tables. Obviously I don't want to have real data in
the fields, but what do you usually put as sample data? For a name
field it's no big deal - John Doe or Bob Smith or some other fairly
generic name is fine. but some of these are company specific codes. I
don't have much faith in the intelligence of users. I can easily
imagine someone looking at the picture of the screen and thinking 'OK,
in this field I enter XXX' where XXX is the pretend code I've put in the
screen shot. Also, the demo model I'm using has some fields containing
text like 'this is sample text.' Are there any conventions for this
sort of thing?
Thanks.
Mary Howe
Thunder Works, Inc.
thunder -at- idir -dot- net