Re: [Usability] HIG Clarification for "Close Without Saving" button

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2005-01-31 at 22:00 -0400, Steven Garrity wrote:
> I'm working on evaluating (and hopefully improving) the consistency of 
> save confirmation dialogs in Gnome [1] and there's a bug in the HIG that 
> is holding me up. [2]
> 
> As the comments on the bug explain, the problem is that the "Close" and 
> "Close without Saving" buttons both have "C" as their shortcut key. This 
> should be relatively simple to resolve.
> 
> A smaller issue (also mentioned in the bug comments): I'm not sure if 
> the "w" in "Close without Saving" should be capitalized or not.
> 
> The HIG says [3] that "Command button labels" should use "header" 
> capitalization and that means all initial-caps, except for "Prepositions 
> of three or fewer letters: at, for, by, in, to". So I think "without" 
> should have an upper-case W. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

The Gnome Documentation Style Guide agrees with this, and so this is
probably the best option at this time.  It is worth noting, however,
that the Chicago Manual of Style does not agree.  The CMS recommends
against capitalizing any prepositions, unless they are the first word.

I think it's high time we followed suit on this one.  Breaking from CMS
should only be done when there is very good reason to do so.

I'm CC'ing gnome-doc-list to get the rest of the GDP's opinions.

--
Shaun