[Lazarus] Error messages: cannot versus can't
Giuliano Colla
giuliano.colla at fastwebnet.it
Fri Oct 17 12:50:12 CEST 2014
Il 17/10/2014 12:21, Reinier Olislagers ha scritto:
> On 17/10/2014 12:16, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
>> On Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:58:21 +0200
>> Reinier Olislagers <reinierolislagers at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Googling gives lot of pages saying that cannot is more formal than
>> can't. And MS Word prefers cannot over can not.
>>
>> This means: It depends on the target audience of your application.
> Yes, formal versus informal is part of it. Another part is
> comprehension, e.g.
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb226825%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
> "Avoid contractions in technical messages. They can slow down
> comprehension."
>
In my experience Microsoft should be taken as a guideline of what *not*
to do.
The inventors of the well known dialog: Abort, Retry, Ignore should not
have voice on what is user friendly and what's not.
Giuliano
--
Giuliano Colla
Project planning question: when it's 90% done, are we halfway or not yet?
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