Should you emphasise text within quotation marks?
e.g.
Bold:
Click "Setting" then click "Options".
Italic:
Click "Setting" then click "Options".
Or even underline?
Or none quotation marks?
Click Setting then click Options.
Which is better/correct/preferred?
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2 answers
Underlines are only for links; don't use them in copy for anything else (outside certain legal contexts).
Either use bold/italic or quotes, but not both. It's redundant. Which one you choose will depend on what's easiest to read. If you have many of these steps and commands, I would go with a bold or italic, as too many quotes gets visually exhausting.
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I have seen bold and I have seen inverted commas. I haven't seen combinations.
Simply say which you are going to use at the beginning. For example, I just found this in 'Beginning Android Application Development': "Code is presented in two different ways: We use a monofont type with no highlighting for most code examples. We use bolding to emphasize code that is of particular importance in the present context." (I haven't included their formatting.)
I realise that this code rather than which menu item to choose, but I think there are a lot of similarities.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20091. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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