[Sigia-l] verbs in labels

[donna at maadmob.net]

I too have in the past tried the consistent grammatical structure - 
starting with verbs for tasks/actions.

However, I always get to the point where it looks silly or the verbs 
start repeating, and I drop back to a combination of nouns & verbs.

My current app is an authoring tool for an Intranet. I started with:
- create new page
- delete a page
- edit a published page
- upload a file

All looked good until I got to a bit that had lots of verbs associated - a 
list of pages that had various actions. It ended up being 'my 
unpublished pages'. So then I fiddled around with the others and 
deleted the word 'create' from new page. It is now a mixture, but 
works fine...

I think (and I should think about this better but my brain is too full) that 
if the verb is implicit (ie what else would you do with a new page 
except create one), you can drop it. If the verb is useful to qualify the 
noun, keep it. The length of the label has an impact as well.

Of course, you will have done some research and know what tasks 
people perform, so you will have started well ;) Then test it and make 
sure it is all fine...

Donna

On 16 Jun 2003 at 15:59, Peter VanDijck wrote:

> Does anyone have thoughts or references about using verbs throughout in
> labels? Like: "Adjust Personal Data" instead of "Personal Data". Does
> anyone know of a product/site that has attempted that?
> 
> PeterV
> ------------