Hi Chauncey, Thank you for your feedback - I was hoping you would! These are just form labels like First Name: textbox - rather than First Name text box. My feeling has been that the colon serves as an indicator as well. In that case, they wouldn't be non-data ink a la Tufte, as they serve a purpose.
Courtney ________________________________ From: Chauncey Wilson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 4:25 PM To: Jordan, Courtney Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] To use a colon or not to use a colon after field labels Hello Courtney, The colon issue is one of the classic debates in UI design and it has raged since the early 1990s. I generally agree with Caroline, but if you have fields that are read-only with no 3D appearance, the colon can serve as an indicator that some text will follow. The colon serves to differentiate label from text (since in some cases there may be no text by the label and the label will look like a lost piece of text). Another consideration is whether you are following the particular style. I believe that the Vista guidelines call for a colon so if you are following Vista, you might want to follow that style. Chauncey On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Jordan, Courtney <[email protected]> wrote: Could anyone help me on the subject of whether to use colons after field labels. I have found one accessibility paper and a few other not-so-respected sources that indicate that colons after field labels help screen reader users, as well as normal vision users, to expect an input field. However, after years of including colons after field labels, our copy dept now maintains that a colon is punctuation and shouldn't be included after field labels. I've also found Jarrett's, "No one cares about colons but UX people" and Luke W doesn't mention it in his book :(. Has anyone fought this battle before? Do you have any sources that you could point me to? Thanks in advance, Courtney Jordan ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
