Familiar situation. I'd do a few test pages and see which one looked the
least offensive. :-) Remembering the users and what they want/need out
of the publication, if it's most important for them to be able to find
part names quickly, my choice might be the sans serif part names amid
serif text. Too many initial caps is just harder to read I think. San
serif is less intrusive, but still stands out. If you only have 1 or 2
part names on a page, any option that suits users would work. However,
I've worked on manuals where custom names ended up being so common on
the page that it was just the proverbial dog's breakfast. Nothing stood
out because everything stood out! UGH. Italics or underlining actually
may not be too bad -- but print it out to see.
Maybe some market research is needed. How exactly do the intended users
work with the publication? Do they look up procedures and make note of
required parts? Would they look up parts in an index or other type of
reference page? Ask those questions of your engineer. His impression of
what users want may not be entirely accurate. And yeah, if there is a
standard or style guide, stick with it but like you, I doubt one exists.
Remember the old days when we used to use different fonts like Courier
for computer input, and bold for menus etc.? I ended up with some pretty
scary pages following that convention. No less than 14 different fonts
on one 7.5 x 9 page, once. That convinced me to stop doing that
immediately, lol.
--Beth
Beth Agnew, Professor
Co-ordinator, Technical Communication Program
Seneca College
of Applied Arts & Technology
70 the Pond Road| Toronto, ON | M3J 3M6
416.491.5050 x3133 | beth.ag...@senecac.on.ca
www.senecatechcomm.com
FB: http://bit.ly/bNQsDL
Twitter: Professorsan, Writingwiz
Thomas Johnson wrote:
Good afternoon,
Engineers, you gotta like 'em. I suppose without them, many of us would be
without a job.
Okay, here's the situation. An engineer wants to make part names stand out by treating them as proper nouns.
To clarify he would like part names, those that appear on drawings and such, to be capitalized, but not
generic terms. I guess that would mean "Upper Module Housing" would be capitalized, but "the
housing" would not. He said something said about only doing it for the "first use", but we'll
ignore that for now. I can't see how he applied that consistently in anything he's written. I don't know if
he meant first use in a step or first use in a procedure, or something else.
Have you ever seen this done in a manual? I'm ending up with a mess of capitalized terms
like Upper Module, Lower Module, Shoes, Axles, and Coiled Spring Pins scattered
throughout instructions. I asked the engineer if this was something the client has as a
standard. He avoided answering that question and said something akin to "That's what
I do to make things stand out so that it's easier to find part names in manuals that can
be three to four-hundred pages long."
While formatting several chapters of the manual, I made many of the names lower
case. It made no sense to me and I've never seen it done before. He went on to
say, a little later, that he likes to italicize the name as well. Arrrghh! I
know, I should've told him then and there that one or the other would be more
than enough emphasis. Maybe I should suggest that he underline them as
well-just to have a little fun with him.
Anyway, I want to make sure I'm not missing something before I decide to stand my ground
or to relent and go back to "recapitalize" what I've changed. I think the
easiest way would be to ask him to show me where his standard is written down
(particularly anywhere where our client has defined this spec) so I can make sure I apply
it consistently and appropriately. I doubt he'll be able to produce it and then I'll
reiterate that I've never seen it done that way, it clutters things up, and makes them
more complicated to deal with.
In case I'm wrong, I'd like to get suggestions for a formatting convention that
might be less intrusive than Initial Caps, maybe small caps or a sans serif
font (within a serif environment), that would make these terms more visible
within the surrounding text, if it comes down to that.
Thank you in advance.
Tom Johnson
Technical Writer
231-944-7454
tajohn...@microlinetc.com
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