The standard I found most common and probably most clear is to quote anything that appears on screen as fixed-width font on grey background
. Using unicode right arrow → is the neat, elegant way to shortcut a traverse through interface.
- Open
File
→ Preferences
and pick the Advanced
tab.
- Use the slider to adjust
Allocated memory
to 30MB and confirm with [OK]
.
(preferably, a fixed-width Serif font like Courier makes it even more clear.)
In case of any fancier icons, describe their look only if you absolutely must. Otherwise, try to use actual images. You are welcome to name them too, but the images are quite important.
- Click
to create a new document.
You can optionally use separate markup for [buttons]
, [x] checkboxes
([ ] unchecked too
), (o) radiobuttons
, /tabs\
, but it's fairly rare (outside of buttons, [OK]
or [x]
close button are rather common.)
Other than that, be descriptive what you try to achieve and what are the expected results, especially where given element is (use the file dialog to go to the Applications
folder; pick File
→ Preferences
from the window menu)
Use italics to describe variable content - not literal quote. Use bold to describe text that is to be typed in by the user. You can combine all typographical conventions (e.g. variable user-typed content appearing on screen).
- The result will appear as
NIC0-MAC:
HW Address
- type
telnet
address port
into the command window.