For information on specific terms, go to the Tricky Terminology chapter. Whereas an example of text containing terms could be, “Connect to the data source”. Some example terms are “data source”, “plug-in” and “paste special”, but also key verbs like “select”, “double-click” and “mark”. “Text” refers to any strings, words, phrases or sentences, whereas “terms” or “terminology” refers to individual units of meaning, which may or may not be limited to one word.

Text is just as important as colors and shapes in guiding users to the right elements to perform desired tasks, even more so for blind users. It is vital that users do not get lost when traversing the user interface. Additional people for whom these guidelines will be important are those working in quality assurance (QA), development engineers who write specifications or implement resource strings (text seen on the UI), translators who translate (localize) from English as the source language, as well as anyone working on documentation that refers to the UI. This guide is predominantly for the people who design the German and English UI text of : mainly user experience designers and user interface linguists. Any guidelines relating to German are highlighted by the colors of the German flag in the right margin, as seen to the right of this paragraph.įor the purposes of this guide, the definition of text on the user interface only includes menus and submenus, dialogs, tooltips (short ones displayed during “What's This?” mouse-over), message boxes, wizards, etc., but not Command Line Interface, Help or documentation, even though they also appear onscreen and thus constitutes, in some definitions, part of the user interface. There are also notes when special guidelines are needed for German, because is designed and implemented in German and English simultaneously. Purpose This guide describes how to design text for the user interface (UI) of the English version of. User Interface Text Style GuideĪuthor: Elizabeth Matthis Modified by Christian Jansen 1.

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