Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!sunic!kth!draken!tut!santra!kiravuo From: kiravuo@kampi.hut.fi (Timo Kiravuo) Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons Message-ID: Date: 21 Aug 89 18:32:41 GMT References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <1985@softway.oz> <1989Aug20.005726.27233@utzoo.uucp> <30767@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <9446@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <30778@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <9458@cs.Buffalo.EDU> Sender: news@santra.UUCP Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Computing Center Lines: 34 In-reply-to: dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU's message of 21 Aug 89 15:55:04 GMT In article <9458@cs.Buffalo.EDU> dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark) writes: > I can very very easily imagine that the international negation > symbol is 'natural'. It seems to me that it might be quite > 'natural' in almost all cultures that "crossing something out" > would be a way of negating it. I am not too sure about that. When I was a foreign exchange student in the US, we had to mark some tests. I caused small disturbance by using the Finnish symbols, which conflict with the USAmerican ones. In Finland we mark a correct answer with a slash with two dots, a little bit like the percentage mark (historical reasons). A wrong answer is marked with a V, for the Finnish word meaning false. So my right marks looked like crosses and my wrong marks like check-marks. According to my knowledge the slash with two dots comes from the way books about people were kept in the church. A slash marked a person who could read a tiny bit, a slash with two dots a person who could somewhat read and a cross person who could really read. Since a diagonal cross is used as a check mark, the %-like looking marks was later used at schools to mark a correct answer. But a diagonal cross _over_ something is considered a negation sign here, too. The red disk with horizontal bar does not however mean so much a negation to me as a forbidden direction. I might always consider going around one. So the universal icons are really a problem. -- Timo Kiravuo Helsinki University of Technology, Computing Center work: 90-451 4328, home: 90-676 076 kiravuo@hut.fi sorvi::kiravuo kiravuo%hut.fi@uunet.uu.net