Where is that whatchamacallit?
Is this a text box or text frame?
If you are a regular reader of indesignserets you should already know the correct answer – text frame. I can forgive people for saying text box since it may seem like the obvious answer, but it isn’t correct. Now, I am not trying to be a nerd and point out tiny insignificant flaws in someones answer (ex – Greedo shots first, which isn’t insignificant in my world), but it is important to use the correct terminology.
The problem with using incorrect terms is that it can lead to communication problems. Some of the confusion may come from experienced designers/production artists who have been using QuarkXPress for years and are accustomed to the old Quark term, but it can also propagates with new users who are ignorant to the correct terms and just make up something that seem to fit.
Example 1
Q: My text isn’t linking correctly, please help!
A: The technically correct answer to this would lead me to think that they are having problems with linked word documents or maybe they are using an InCopy work-flow and are having issues with assignments. In reality they are probably just trying to have text flow from one area of a page to another. The question should have be phrased, “Please help me thread my text frames”. Unfortunately, I rarely get asked a question in this manner and I have to guess as to what they are referring too.
Example 2
A user wants to have text flow around an image in their layout. Since they didn’t know the correct term (text wrap) they spent all day searching InDesign’s help system or Googling various keywords (runaround, text bump, image wrap, and so on). If you don’t know the correct terms it can make finding help next to impossible. I can’t fault the user for not knowing the term if they never learned it, but it goes to show the importance of using the correct language.
Example 3
A supervisor asks you to decrease the leading in the body text of your layout. As you follow their recommendation/order you change the leading from 14pt to 12pt and as a result the line spacing gets tighter. After you make this change they become furious with you because they meant for you to change the space between all of the letters (tracking), but they just used the wrong term. If they had used the correct word this situation would have been avoided.
What Can We Do About it?
My new years resolution that I hope to pass on to everyone is to try and use the correct term whenever possible. You don’t have to be a jerk and correct everyone that you meet if they use the wrong word, but try to use it whenever you speak or write to someone else about InDesign.
Here is a list of common words and phrases that I trying to teach people to speak intelligently when are referring to InDesign.
Wrong/Correct
- text box/text frame
- picture box/graphic frame
- import or get/place
- item tool or black arrow/selection tool
- content tool or white arrow/direct selection tool
- collect for output/package
- usage/links or find font
- fly-out menu/ panel menu
- palette/panel
- dot dot dot/ellipsis
- linking text boxes/threading text frames
- runaround/text wrap
Misunderstood Terms
There are some terms that get passed around the interchanged when they have
- Kerning – Changing the space between two characters
- Tracking – Changing the space between a selection of text.
- Leading- Change the space between lines
- Kilobyte (K) – Tiny file size. ~1000k = ~1MB
- Megabyte (MB) – Medium file size. ~1000mb = ~1GB
- Gigabyte (GB) – Large File Size. ~1000gb = ~1TB (Terabyte)
Calling an InDesign text frame a “text box” is like calling “Star Wars” “Star Trek.” You just don’t.
Hmmm,
I guess I’m having a problem of old-timers disease. While I TOTALLY agree with James’ contention that clarity of language is extremely important. I have to say that some of the blame lies at the feet of Adobe. Terms like runaround, text box, import/get, and palette have been in use in the graphics industry for a very long time, some predating DTP. Adobe, in their quest to differentiate themselves from previous applications, decided to change items that even they had been using for no reason other than to be different. Instead of clarifying language, this confuses things further. If I teach my students to call a text frame a frame instead of a box, what happens when they go to work for an agency that uses Quark? Will they understand that the terms are interchangeable? I’d love to see an ISO standard for terminology, but I greatly fear that we’d end up with tech people writing the standard and we know how well they’ve done with dialog boxes and help files.
My answer to students who ask about the difference has always been “Quark must have bought the patent on the text box”
I agree that it’s hard to provide help without the right terminology. Bob started this list a while back, too, which can help:
http://indesignsecrets.com/the-not-so-ultimate-guide-to-translating-quarkxpress-terms-to-indesign-terms.php
I will take exception, however, to your dissing the term “flyout menu,” which I think is acceptable. Here’s the problem: Panel menus are different than every other kind of menu. They don’t look like menus… in fact, many people don’t even see them there. I agree that “panel menu” is better, but I accept “flyout.”
I also think “palette” is quite acceptable, given that Adobe called them palettes for many years.
But here’s something that drives me crazy:
You do not “Check Ignore Text Wrap in the Text Frame Options dialog,” you “turn on the Ignore Text Wrap checkbox in the Text Options dialog box.”
First, to “check” means to look at, not “enable,” “turn on,” or “activate.” I hate the verb “check” when used in GUI, and any InDesignSecrets contributor who uses it will be unceremoniously slapped with a wet noodle.
Second, it’s a “dialog box” not a “dialog.” A “dialog” is something you have with someone. A dialog box appears on screen. I know I’m fighting an uphill battle on this one, but I’m standing firm.
Okay, I’m getting off this soap box now. Everyone back to work.
My favorite is
# dot dot dot/ellipse
And…. your “dialog box” not a “dialog” should not be an uphill battle whatsoever. It’s fact. English. Perfectly acceptable to be something that drives you crazy (also because it drives me crazy as well).
When you say “ellipse”, do you mean ellipsis?
@Jeremy,
Yes, that is exactly what I meant. Spell check can be a pain at times. Thanks for the catch.
Good catch, Jeremy!
Unlike David, I have no problem with “dialog” for “dialog box” especially when you’re writing or speaking informally, when adding “box” all the time sounds a little fussy to my ear. I think most computer users completely understand what you mean by “Open the Print dialog and choose a printer,” just as they completely understand that saying “Scroll up” means “Drag the vertical scroll bar up,” and not “Roll a piece of paper into a tube.” (And then there are the people who insist it should be called a “dialogue box” and heaven forbid you leave off the ue.)
BUT for “official” writing (such as a magazine article or a book), I’m careful to say “dialog box” as that’s often part of the publications’ style.
My own pet peeves are getting the names of tools wrong, such as calling the Type tool the “Text” tool, or the Zoom tool the “Magnifying glass” tool. Only because the correct names are right there in the Tool Tips, so how hard is it to get right? LOL
One exception, though, is that the Hand tool may be called Mr. Spanky at any time for any program. We need more humor in this world.
Second, it’s a “dialog box” not a “dialog.”
Hmm. The InDesign application has a “dialogs” collection, and one of them is called a “Dialog”.
Script UI has three types of Windows: a “Window”, a “Palette”, and (you guessed it) a “Dialog”.
I guess you better take it up with the InDesign (and CS) engineers…
Harbs,
That is just to save us poor coders from extra typing
.
@Fred, Since when do they do that?
Some nice examples of really short ones: FindChangeDirectionalFeatherSetting
ObjectStyleContentEffectsCategorySettings
ConditionUnderlineIndicatorAppearance
GlobalClashResolutionStrategyForMasterPage (used as: GlobalClashResolutionStrategyForMasterPage.LOAD_ALL_WITH_OVERWRITE)
ObjectStyleContentEffectsCategorySettings
You get the picture…
I guess I’m in the lucky position of generally working with people who don’t know any terminology and thus I get everything described to me (“Can you make the letters be closer together?” etc.)
I agree with most of what is said. Especially about the Dialog Box – it’s defined as “dialog box
A dialog box is a small area containing information or questions that appears on a computer screen when you are performing particular operations. ”
Although I will invariably call the Selection Tool and the Direct Selection tool the Black Arrow and the White Arrow.
I find that if I tell someone to use the Selection Tool or the Direct Selection tool it confuses them.
It’s far easier to point out these tools by their colours, they can learn the terminology in their own time.
Here’s one I’ve been wondering about: Lately, almost every video tutorial that features a panel containing parent/child list items, (think ID’s Scripts or Assignments Panels, as well as the Layers Panels in Illustrator and Photoshop), clicking the arrow next to a parent item to expand the list of its child items is referred to as “twirling open” or “twirling down.” Who on Earth coined that misnomer, and how did it catch on so widely and quickly? I can’t help imagining Adobe Product Managers intentionally proliferating such terms. Is there some other explanation?
Twirling is fun
(honestly never heard that term either, but I don’t watch a lot of the videos either, so that’s probably why?)
I’ve heard the term “twirl” before, usually when someone’s talking about clicking on a disclosure triangle. “Twirl it open” is faster to say than “Click on the triangle so it points down and you can see stuff.”
But I agree it’s strange to say “twirl” especially since it doesn’t twirl, it just rotates 90 degrees. Probably more accurate to say “expand” and “collapse.”
I dearly love the UK way of dealing with checkboxes in how-to’s. They say “tick the checkbox” or “untick it” and it’s perfectly clear what’s meant. For the US, “check the checkbox” is just too silly and ambiguous.
Well not in the UK, but in Ireland. And I have to say it sort of makes sense to say “tick the box” or “check the box”.
Turn on Ignore Text Wrap – seems a bit strange to say and to read.
I don’t really see the difference in the two – but that’s perhaps because I’m subjected to both sets of terminology on a daily basis.
Like colour and color, and dialog and dialouge, and etc.
Yeah, I like “tick the checkbox.” That would work for me. Except in states where there’s Lyme disease.
I have always liked “turn on the checkbox” but I think that may just be my California ’70s upbringing. Some companies go for “enable/disable the checkbox” which I don’t like, though I am fine with “enable the such-n-such feature.”
As for those triangles, I wish there were a standard there, too. I have heard Adobe folks call them “twisties” (as in, twirl the twistie) but that just seems wrong somehow.
I think I would opt for “click the expand triangle”
I love this discussion! What bothered me the most when first learning to use InDesign was the different terminology, and I couldn’t find a Quark-to InDesign translation dictionary anywhere. The problem sent me back to using Quark often, because InDesign Help was no help when you had no idea what something was named!
The master himself did it here http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/indesign/articles/indcs3at_quarkmigration.html
Yes, and it’s really great, but my problem was way back in the olden days of the first version of ID.
As an InDesign teacher, I try to use the correct terminology all the time. But I often get questions like: “Do you mean the text box?”
Once I establish the correct terminology on our class web sites, I gently correct wrong usage.
I got Twisties from Michael Ninness years ago, and it kind of stuck, but I often have to explain that one.
Mr. Spanky is now standard nomenclature as far as I am concerned. But I always explain White Arrow or Black Arrow to make sure they get it right. text to outlines can go horribly wrong otherwise.
And these ones are just the beginning of the confusion. Especially in the German version, wrong and/or misleading translations (sometimes changing from CS to CS version) complete the confusion.
Obviously the DTP translators don’t know anything about DTP, but only can speak and write two languages (more or less).
To me, a major source of the terminology problem is the programmers of major packages who 1) reuse terms which have a standard meaning in English for something slightly or substantially different; 2) arbitrarily change terms in a new release of a program when there was nothing wrong in the previous version. MS is notorious for this, but I’m afraid Adobe has some blame to. Programmers also need to be careful to think about words with multiple meanings: check a box is always ambiguous in American English, but can mean the wrong thing in English English.
The shortcut for a frame is F, so I could never forget what they’re called.
@ David:
I think I would opt for “click the expand triangle”
..guess we have to ask the developers what actually happens with the traingle when clicked in an expandable state..
If they -replace- the graphic when clicked with a downwards pointing one then you’re right.
But if they just rotate it – then that same one is also used to collapse again so it should be : “click the expand/collapse triangle”..
@ John Feld:
Text to outlines in Indesign? May I ask for what purpose? A Mask or?
I vote for renaming the hand tool to Mr. Spanky. Thanks Anne-Marie Concepcion!
I use the term “disclosure triangle” for the twirlie. I heard it somewhere once and I like it good enough, and it really confuses newbies.