Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dalcs!aucs!peter
From: peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: A question for Mac Authors
Message-ID: <1233@aucs.UUCP>
Date: 24 Aug 88 13:35:44 GMT
Reply-To: peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele)
Distribution: na
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia
Lines: 30

Here's a dumb question that someone might have an answer to. I write a
lot of documentation on my Mac. When I want a hyphen, I just press
the minus key. When I want an em-dash (a long dash), I use option
shift minus. The Mac keyboard also has a medium dash (option minus).
When is this type of dash used in documentation as opposed to the
short dash and the long dash?

And while we're on the subject...

When I write user documentation, I often have things like

   ...click on the button called "Okay".

Note the period:                       ^
Should this be outside the quotes as I have it, or should it go inside
the quotes? What are the general rules for quoted words/phrases and
punctuation in cases like this in technical documents?

And one final one: When an italicized phrase ends in a semicolon or colon
and the text that follows is not italicized, should the colon or semicolon
be italics or normal?

I know this is pretty mindless stuff to be wasting bandwidth on, but
would someone like to enlighten me?

-- 
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU