Thank you, everyone, for your feedback. In this case, I definitely feel colons are justified: they serve a purpose, thus they are not non-data ink; they provide a structure and an expectation of what is coming up next (a textbox) which further contributes to the concept of them being data ink, and aesthetically, I feel that they make the form look more professional and complete. Obviously, there are those that disagree with me, and I appreciate all of your great feedback!
Courtney -----Original Message----- From: Caroline Jarrett [mailto:caroline.jarr...@effortmark.co.uk] Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 1:13 PM To: Jordan, Courtney; disc...@ixda.org Subject: RE: [IxDA Discuss] To use a colon or not to use a colon after field labels > Subject: [IxDA Discuss] To use a colon or not to use a colon after > field labels > > Could anyone help me on the subject of whether to use colons after field labels. I have found one accessibility paper and a few other not-so-respected sources that indicate that colons after field labels help screen reader users, as well as normal vision users, to expect an input field. However, after years of including colons after field labels, our copy dept now maintains that a colon is punctuation and shouldn't be included after field labels. I've also found Jarrett's, "No one cares about colons but UX people" and Luke W doesn't mention it in his book :(. Has anyone fought this battle before? Do you have any sources that you could point me to? You have accurately summarised my article: http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3112.asp As Luke doesn't mention colons, maybe we should add "and not even a lot of them" to the end of the summary :-) But maybe you missed the follow-up one? http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3200.asp That discussed the problem of screen readers and colons at the end of labels. So far as I have been able to find out since then, it used to be the case in the Olden Days that screen readers relied on colons as a cue about where the label might be. These days, they rely more on the actual mark-up. So provided that you are using "label" tags appropriately, the screen reader doesn't need the colon. The user may or may not hear 'colon' depending on whether the screen reader is set up to read the punctuation. My suggestion: estimate how long it would take to take all the colons off the existing forms. Ask your copy people if they truly wish to put that time in, compared to all the other cool/useful/revenue-earning (delete as applicable) things that you could be doing. Might help them to make a decision. Best Caroline Jarrett ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
