menu-item, help-echo conventions

menu-item, help-echo conventions

[Glenn Morris]

There seem to be some (unwritten?) conventions for menu-items and
their help texts:

i) Capitalize all non-trivial words in a menu item. E.g. in "Files":
"New Frame on Display".

ii) In menu-item help text, start with a capital, use the imperative,
don't end with a full-stop; e.g. "Insert another file into current
buffer".

Is that correct?

Some places violate these conventions, e.g.: "Edit" "Paste from kill
menu" rather than "Paste from Kill Menu"; "Edit" "Select All" has
help-text that ends in a full-stop; etc.

Some other things are inconsistent, e.g. in the "Options" menu, the
help-text for Auto Fill uses a capital "Mode", but in the entry for
"Blinking Cursor", a lower-case "mode" is used. It seems the latter is
preferred?

Obviously not critical, but if the above are the actual conventions,
it would be nice to document them somewhere (tips.texi?), and to fix
incorrect instances as they are noticed.

Re: menu-item, help-echo conventions

[Stefan Monnier]

> There seem to be some (unwritten?) conventions for menu-items and
> their help texts:

> i) Capitalize all non-trivial words in a menu item. E.g. in "Files":
> "New Frame on Display".

I actually dislike this convention.  I'd rather use "New frame on
display" so we can use capitalization where it matters.

> ii) In menu-item help text, start with a capital, use the imperative,
> don't end with a full-stop; e.g. "Insert another file into current
> buffer".

Yes, that sounds right.  I don't care much after the full stop, but it's
good to standardize its presence or absence.

> Some other things are inconsistent, e.g. in the "Options" menu, the
> help-text for Auto Fill uses a capital "Mode", but in the entry for
> "Blinking Cursor", a lower-case "mode" is used. It seems the latter is
> preferred?

Lower case "mode" is indeed the preferred form.

> Obviously not critical, but if the above are the actual conventions,
> it would be nice to document them somewhere (tips.texi?), and to fix
> incorrect instances as they are noticed.

Yes, it would be good to document at least the parts that we agree on,
and to fix the inconsistencies.


        Stefan

Re: menu-item, help-echo conventions

[Chong Yidong]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> i) Capitalize all non-trivial words in a menu item. E.g. in "Files":
>> "New Frame on Display".
>
> I actually dislike this convention.  I'd rather use "New frame on
> display" so we can use capitalization where it matters.

My impression is that every modern graphical applications system (Gnome,
KDE, Windows, Mac OS X...) says to capitalize menu items in their Human
Interface Guidelines document.  I don't know if there is any research
about whether it is better, but when in doubt it's probably better to go
with the flow.

Re: menu-item, help-echo conventions

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 20:54, Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> wrote:

> My impression is that every modern graphical applications system (Gnome,
> KDE, Windows, Mac OS X...) says to capitalize menu items in their Human
> Interface Guidelines document.

That is language dependent. Capitalization of non-trivial words in
titles and such is common in English, but looks weird in Spanish, for
example. Menu items in Spanish editions of Windows only capitalize the
first word.

  Juanma