Comments on: Why are computer dialog boxes so bad?

By: Say What You Mean | Middle Zone Musings

Say What You Mean | Middle Zone Musings — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:45:05 +0000

[...] Stibbe at Bad Language points to an article written by Peter Seebach at IBM’s website about really bad language usage in [...]

By: Middle Zone Musings » Say What You Mean

Middle Zone Musings » Say What You Mean — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:23:39 +0000

[...] Stibbe at Bad Language points to an article written by Peter Seebach at IBM’s website about really bad language usage in [...]

By: Say What You Mean « Middle Zone Musings

Say What You Mean « Middle Zone Musings — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:06:50 +0000

[...] Matthew Stibbe at Bad Language points to an article written by Peter Seebach at IBM’s website about really bad language usage in software dialog boxes. It’s amazing how perfectly competent people can come up with something as complicated and technically beautiful as a fully-functional software program, yet the dialog boxes can still look like they were written by someone with no language skills whatsoever! My favorite part of the article is this quote: “One trend that I suspect may be at issue (and it’s hardly unique to computers) is a tendency for people to become incoherent when they try to talk real pretty.” [...]

By: Project Syndicate » Say What You Mean

Project Syndicate » Say What You Mean — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 19:09:30 +0000

By: Away With Words

Away With Words — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:17:03 +0000

How to Write Like Stephen King…

And other tricks they don’t teach at those fancy-shmancy writing workshops: Everything You Need to Know about Writing Successfully–in Ten Minutes. It’s from Stephen King, so it’s gotta be true, right? Step 1: Be talented. Oh, damn. Fortunately, Kin…

By: Gustavo

Gustavo — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:25:09 +0000

I think sometimes messages don’t need to be directly readable to the user, but to the programmers themselves. That makes it easier to locate and fix bugs. That is the case of “Can’t make a visible window modal.” that you gave. A simple “Problem in windowing structure.” or something like that would be more difficult to find in the code. This is valid, of course, if you’re going to report the problem. If you’re gonna try to fix it by youself or need to make a decision right away — as in the “restore natural order” example above –, then I agree with you.

By: Debbie Weil

Debbie Weil — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:16:04 +0000

Matthew,

Just ran across your blog and site — and I love them! I’m also a huge fan of good writing. I’m the author of “The Corporate Blogging Book” (Penguin Portfolio – August 2006). It will be published in the UK by Piatkus in September! You can find it on amazon.co.uk.

By: Robert Hruzek

Robert Hruzek — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:02:28 +0000

This reminds me of something I found on the New Scientist website some time ago:

The Mozilla Thunderbird email program offered Angela Brown the option: ‘Restore natural order’.

“Will selecting it just sort my messages”, she asks, “or will it reset the entire universe?”

By: Partner Perspectives

Partner Perspectives — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:30:48 +0000

A chat with Matthew in Tom’s café……

I met with the writer of the Partner Update Magazine yesterday. We sat putting the world to right in……