Style Question

[Ada Lai <adalai2000@xxxxxxxxx>]

First, let me offer a belated thanks to all for your opinions and rationale 
offered last week on page numbering in large documents. Everyone's comments 
have helped me understand more about how page numbering can relate to the 
manner in which a document is used. As an FYI, I have decided to proceed 
with consecutive page numbering through the whole book.

Next, I have a style question:

I need to make frequent reference to submenu commands. As an example, if I 
wanted to tell someone how to set up their page numbers in a FM document, I 
might direct them to "Select Format > Document > Numbering" and then 
proceed with an explanation of the resulting dialog.

I know that it may be better to say something like, "From the Format menu, 
select Document, then select Numbering," but this gets to be very tedious 
for both me and the reader when a procedure/chapter requires this kind of 
direction on a frequent basis.

This problem permeates the entire suite of documentation at my client's   
site.

However, the problem is that almost every tech writer that has been there 
has adopted a different style for specifying these multi-level menu 
selections.

I have been given the task of cleaning up their templates and style guide 
and this has me stumped as to how to approach it.

I have checked the various "popular" style guides, but none of them address 
this technique (and most seem not to even consider it an option).

Are we wrong? Should we bite the bullet and adopt the verbal approach of 
describing how to navigate the menus?

If anyone else uses this "shorthand" approach, can you give me some idea as 
to the style(s) you have adopted? I am particularly interested in hearing 
what character you use to separate the multiple levels of menu 
commands/options.

Hope this makes sense....

Thanks in advance ..

Ada Lai


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