: Re: What are standard techniques that indicate to the documentation reader that they are to substitute their own appropriate text (e.g. username, domain)? When reading manuals or guides, I can easily

@Phylliss352

Vote Up Vote Down

As the other anwers show, different practices have been established for various systems.

It is important to differentiate between texts that mainly address people who are aware of such technicalities and texts that address people who are not aware of them.

People who fit into the first group will usually expect this type of substitution because they are used to it. The methods given in the other answers will suffice: these standards have been established for a reason.

Users who are not accustomed to technical writing and the corresponding style of documentation may struggle with such instructions.
In addition to optically emphasise the term to be replaced, it may help these users to add remarks for clarification, such as:

In the following code snippet, replace partition with the name of
the device you want to create the ext4 filesystem on:


# mkfs.ext4 /dev/partition

(0)

Login to post a comment!