"Appears" vs. "will appear"

[Sarah Bouchier]

>Use appears in other sentences and perhaps you will have the desire to
>append, "as if by magic" or "out of nowhere."

'Open the can of tuna.  A cat appears.'

I have now thought about this issue until my brain hurts.  I think the
basic problem is that, unlike almost everything else in life, the
window/dialog box really /does/ just appear.

If you unwrap a bar of chocolate, the chocolate doesn't 'appear'; it has
been revealed by you opening it.  If you shout for a friend to come and
help you they don't 'appear'; they  have been summoned from where they
were by your shouting.  It's all entirely predictable cause and effect.
If you click on a button in an application, however, you have no way of
predicting that a dialog window will turn up on your screen.  It wasn't
hidden behind the button, it wasn't summoned from another place.  It
appeared.  Out of nowhere.  As if by magic.

Why do we avoid 'appears'?  Because we want our users to think of
computers as obeying the laws of cause and effect that everything else
does, as being stable and scientific and predictable.  But however true
that might (or, in the case of some software, might not...) be under the
covers, from the point of view of the poor schmuck trying to use it the
dialog window does appear.  Why not say so?

Sarah Bouchier
Technical Author

exony