IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION. VOL. 33. NO I. MARCH 1990 46 zyxwvutsrqpon Graphic and Visual Communication zyxwvutsrq Linguistic Guidelines for Graphic Interfaces R. ALLEN HARRIS Abstract-The most recent challenge in the ever-shifting role of technical writers is the graphic interface. It shares several features with both traditional documentation and online documentation, but it also makes its own unique set of demands. Moreover, even the characteris- tics it has in common with established technical writing formats are raised to new levels: because the whole rationale of the graphic interface is to sidestep language as much as possible, those few linguistic elements which it does incorporate (menu titles, button labels, and the like) carry abnormally heavy demands. This paper presents a series of ten principles to help cope with this new challenge-dealing with lexical, syntactic, and display issues of writing for the graphic interface. HE TECHNICAL WRITER’S job is an ever-shifting T o n e , and among the most recent technologies we have to confront is the graphic interface-an especially challenging medium because its entire purpose is to circumvent language as much as possible. In trying to bypass language, however, graphic interfaces place an extremely heavy load on the few linguistic vestiges left on the screen, and a correspondingly heavy load on the designers and writers responsible for those vestiges. Window titles, button labels, and menu items have to be particularly meaningful and obvious. The small pockets of instructional text and system messages must be especially concise and especially precise. The whole must be clearer, simpler, and more direct than the best user guide or reference manual. This paper presents a series of ten guidelines to help achieve that clarity, simplicity, and pointedness. As the occurrence of familiar technical writing words like zyxwvutsr clarity and simplicity indicates, some of these guidelines have a partially remedial flavor about them. The reasons are two. First, I am passing over fairly well-trod territory, but along a slightly different trail. Punctuation, for instance, has many of the features on the screen that it has on the page (and, of course, punctuation in an interface has even more of the features of conventional online text), but it makes a few unique demands as well. And it seems a sounder strategy to take a broad overview of these issues than to assume a common ground and risk not getting the message across. As information theory demonstrates, when the message is important, it is better to be redundant than obscure. Second, I have tried to keep these guidelines as accessible as possible to software designers since, in the current corporate R. Allen Harris is a Usability and Online Specialist for Bell-Northern Research, with graduate degrees in English Literature. Linguistics. and Technical Communication. He is currently working on a dissertation in the rhetoric of science and linguistics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. scheme of things, they make many important linguistic decisions before information professionals are brought on board. Thus, I have risked being tedious to the information people in order to be moderately comprehensive for the software people. Note that these guidelines do not address the content of the information, which should be Meaningful (that is, expressed in the user’s terms) Useful (directed toward real problems and procedures) Accurate (sound, reliable, and current) Complete (includes all relevant steps and conditions) The following, then, are ten rules of thumb for graphic interface language. AVOID VERBAL SHORTCUTS Verbal shortcuts, although often required by very tight space restrictions or particularly expensive screen real estate, can be very problematic for users. Avoid them as much as possible. Specifically, Avoid abbreviations and acronyms. Avoid telegraphese. Avoid abbreviations and acronyms. Abbreviations and acronyms are not always as familiar or as obvious to the reader as they are to the writer. Abbreviations and acronyms are also jargon, and jargon has a way of disappearing or changing very rapidly. zyxwv so what might have been well-known or clear when it was written can soon become obscure. Consequently, they may not mean very much to the user- and putting meaningless language on the screen is as debilitating for users as stealing their keyboards. Even if you’re lucky enough to find a verbal shortcut that is universally known, perfectly obvious, and fully immutable, it’s still a verbal shortcut and therefore involves some cognitive overhead. That is, it makes things tougher on users, who often have to reconstruct the fuller referent before processing the information. (There are, of course, the exceptions which come to function as names, like NASA and IBM, but never use an abbreviation that won’t be immedi- ately obvious to the user.) This principle includes, wherever possible, all the many 0361-1434/90/0300-0046$01 .OO O 1990 IEEE