Re: Use of Bold and Italics

["Marlene J. Geary" <marlene -at- NECA -dot- COM>]

At 02:45 PM 2/24/97 -0800, Melinda Carr wrote:
>When do you use bold and italics in technical manuals and online help
>systems? I am especially interested in hearing about their use in
>software end-user manuals and help systems.


I use Italics to reference another section name.  For example, "For more
information on this topic, please refer to the section titled 'Creating
General Ledger Accounts.'"  In this e-mail, I used apostrophes to highlight
what would ordinarily be in italics...

Bold is used in several different ways:
1) If I'm outlining a list of steps for the user to follow, the word "Step"
plus the number will be in bold.
2) If I need to refer to anther book/manual, the manual's name will be in
bold and underlined.
3) I use a fairly simple Heading 1-4 in my manuals.  Headings 3 and 4 are in
bold.  Heading 3 represents a chapter sub-section, and Heading 4 is used to
title paragraphs within the text under each Heading 3 title.
4) If a customer must enter/choose a command on the screen, that command is
written in bold in the documentation.  That way, I can eliminate literally
hundreds of apostrophes and quotation marks.


That's it!
Good luck!



====================================================================
|  Marlene J. Geary  |                           |  Writer/Editor  |
|       "Mars"       |        AzathothSKY!       |       DISC      |
|  marlene -at- neca -dot- com  |                           |  Farmington, CT |
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