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Subject:Re[2]: Overly long bulleted lists? From:Virginia Day <Virginia_Day -at- DATACARD -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 30 Jul 1997 13:50:56 -0500
Hi,
I agree that keeping lists shorter can help users. But, what a
general statement! I would rather give a technical user a long list
of what's in a chapter so that they can quickly see whether it
contains what they need than make them page through the chapter. I
also would rather give a naive user a series of short chapters with
short lists, based on what's going to be of greatest use to them,
rather than flooding them with details that will confuse them.
The point is that lists serve different purposes, our publications
have different users, we document very different things and we ought
to give this question the *lower* priority it deserves. If we think
our lists drive our users crazy, shouldn't we find out whether they
really do? Shouldn't we think about whether we are structuring our
overall information package in an effective manner? Should the list
be a table?
Tim, the documentation your employer produces is known for its
quality--I'm sure you contribute to that quality. I do think it's a
good idea to review the basics underlying the work we do, especially
when we're maintaining a product with a long life in the marketplace.
I'll bet you've even got good relationships with your users so you
could find out whether your lists are a problem for them.
(By the way, I'm updating a list of procedures on the first page of a
chapter of an install guide. The installers tell me that they pull
the page out to use as the procedure after they've done a few
installs, so this long list seems to be useful. But, I wouldn't have
known without the feedback.)
Regards, Virginia
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Overly long bulleted lists?
Author: Tim Glasheen <2528 -at- MN3 -dot- LAWSON -dot- LAWSON -dot- COM> at Internet
Date: 7/30/97 1:01 PM
Karen Kay wondered <<So what should you do if you have 11
or 12 items? I'm facing a document with this now. It really
seems like the list is too long, but each item is about two
lines, and there's really no other obvious way to include
the information.>>
What about this? On the first page of our chapters, we have a bulleted list
of the main topics (Heading 1). My procedures chapter has almost 20 bullets.
Any ideas on this?
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