Caution or Attention

[Franziska_Schulthes1]

Hi,

While working on the German version of the Calc guide I realised that there are two versions of warnings in the template, one has the title Achtung and the other Vorsicht.

The English style guide only has one with caution as title and also describes the mandatory items a warning should include.

Checking the chapter 3 of the base handbook I noticed that the title Attention is used and not all items are present, the steps one can take to avoid the danger are missing.

Can someone tell me what version is the correct?
I would personally prefer Caution because that's the word used in the European Guidelines for writing software documentation.

Thanks,
Franziska

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
I don't have a clue about the rules or guidelines but as a native-English speaker ...
1.  i agree that "Caution" is less alarming than "Attention"
2.  If something doesn't quite match all the criteria required in an "Attention" notice then "Caution" is a good fall-back.

I'm not sure if there is any logical reason for "Attention" being more alarming.  It seems more militaristic (if that is really a word) whereas "Caution" is somehow softer and friendlier.  That could just be my own opinion though because i can't think of a logical reason.

Apols and regards from
Tom

[jeanweber]

Either word is correct, depending on the situation, but Caution seems
to be more common in user guides written in English and I note you
said it's the word used in the European Guidelines for writing
software documentation. Some of the uses of Attention in the Base
Handbook might better be Note in the English translation; I have not
been looking closely at that, but probably I should do so during the
next editing pass.

--Jean

[jeanweber]

I don't find "Attention" to be alarming at all and in fact to me it's
fairly equivalent to Caution, which I don't find any friendlier.

So Tom, it's either a cultural (British vs USAmerican or Australian)
word-association thing, or just you.

--Jean

[Gary_Schnabl]

Agreed. Warning is more foreboding than caution--at least when regarding harm to personnel (instead of damage to equipment...) in US English.

Back in the day, DocBook XML publishing of software documentation used the term caution differently than warning. Confer:
caution, http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/caution.html
and warning, http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/warning.html

BTW, OO and LO documentation used only three of those four DocBook terms (tip, note, caution, and warning)--by not using warning.

Gary

[PeeWee]

As someone who has worked in an industry where warnings, cautions and notes are important, here is the definitions that were used:

WARNING - there is a risk of personal injury or death should you not follow instructions correctly and with great diligence.

CAUTION - there is a risk of physical damage to equipment if instructions are not followed correctly and in the correct order.

NOTE - to bring to attention that something may happen when carrying out instructions if the instructions are not carried out in the correct order.

Obviously these definitions do not really apply to software, but it is something worth thinking about when creating warnings, cautions or notes.

As you can see for notes, the word "attention" is used in the definition because that is what note should be used for. It should not be used as a replacement for caution.

In my opinion, caution just makes into its definition because you do something wrong in software, you can break the software. After all, software could be classified as equipment.

Regards

Peter Schofield
psauthor@gmail.com

[Lailah]

Totally agree with Peter.

Lailah