Page 9 - McMurrey Notes

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Underscores:
There is almost no reason for using underscores in technical text. In the days of typewritten text, there certainly was. However, in these times, when bold, italics and other such typographical effects are readily available, underscores look obsolete.
If you want to emphasize something, use your standard guidelines—for example, use italics
or bold. Don't try to create gradations of emphasis: for example, a scale of increasing importance ranging from italics to bold to underscore will be lost on your readers.
If you see good use of underscores in technical text, it will probably occur in heading design.
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CAPITALIZATION: Single or double quotation marks:
In technical publishing, there seems to be a Quotation marks are often mistakenly used as emp-
running battle between technical writers and tech- hasis techniques in technical text. As a technical
nical experts over capitalization. Technical experts writer, limit quotation marks to the traditional usage,
like to use initial caps for practically every compo- which includes quoted speech; numbers, letters,
nent and process in a system. Also, technical or words referred to as such. Quotation marks, like
experts (and management) typically use all caps capital letters, tend to create a busy, distracting text
for text they consider important and want readers and therefore should be avoided.
to attend to. Meanwhile, technical writers and
editors (rightly) insist on using caps for proper One legitimate use of double quotation marks is
names only.
As a technical writer, hold the line against capitalization. Capital letters are distracting; all-caps text is uncomfortable to read. Capital letters create a busy text, which sends lots of unnecessary signals. Capital letters are traditionally intended for proper names such as Microsoft, Netscape, Gateway, Dell Computers, WordPerfect, and so on. The classic guideline in technical publishing is to capitalize the names of separately orderable products only. However, the politics of organizations bends this guideline considerably.
If a company is proud of a certain feature in its new release, for example, EnergyMiser, it will capitalize it, even though you can't order it separately.
– Use the exact capitalization style of messages shown on the computer screen, menu or screen names, field names, hardware labels, and so on. (In rather old interfaces, all-caps was used for things like field, menu, and screen names.)
– Do not use capital letters for emphasis; use italics or bold instead.
– Do not use all-caps for any extended text; use the special-notice format instead.
– Do not capitalize the names of the components or processes of a product. Capitalize only the names of products, that is, components that are separately orderable.
odd, quirky, nonstandard use of words. For example:
In a core dump, the computer "barfs" all data into a single file.
Well-designed computer text avoids quotation marks rather vigorously. One of the primary reasons is that some readers might mistakenly assume that they must include the quotation marks in the commands they enter.
Instead of Write Instead of Write
Use the "move" command. Use the move command. Enter "copy install installnow." Enter copy install installnow
While some technical texts have well-defined uses
for single quotation marks, in general there is no standard use for single quotation marks, other than the traditional quotation-within-a-quotation rule and the quirky-usage rule. When you see single quotation marks within technical text, there is usually no more rationale for their use than there is for double quotation marks.
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Alternate fonts:
One of the most common styles involving alternate fonts is to use Courier or some similar monospaced, old-typewriter-style font in contrast to the standard body font (such as Times New Roman or Helvetica).
Use it for example, display or extended code samples.