Programmer-speak
author: Natasha Lloyd
date: May 21st, 2007
tags: Writing, Communication

Bad message

This message was clearly written by programmers. There are two problems I see:

  1. Few people actually know what “JAR Files” are.
  2. The lack of word-wrapping makes this brief message pretty hard to scan. There’s really no excuse for not making sure that words appear as words and not as “A re” and “wa nt”.

I would re-word it as:

All game files will be deleted. Are you sure you want to proceed?

Although, it would be even better to not refer to “files” at all. I just can’t think of a different word for it.

[6/27/2007 Update: This message was featured on This Is Broken.]

(flickr tag: message)


Comments

4 comments

  1. matej on May 22nd, 2007 12:49 pm

    Well, I think you were in a good direction with ‘game files’. How about just ‘game’ or ‘game details’, ‘game properties’ or ‘game preferences’. I have no idea what JAR files are, so depends on the meaning.
    However, I wouldn’t agree with ‘Are you sure you want to proceed?’ - I believe ‘Are you sure you want to delete?’ is better, since the options below are ‘Delete’ and ‘Back’, and the device alredy defined what ‘Delete’ would mean. ‘Proceed’ is in this case just another added word, the meaning of which is not crystally clear. What do you think?

  2. Natasha on May 22nd, 2007 1:30 pm

    I had thought about leaving it as “Are you sure you want to delete?” but then it seemed like there were too many instances of the word “delete” there. I do agree that it’s easier to understand, though.

    Maybe the better wording would be:
    “Are you sure you want to delete this game?”

    One sentence, gets to the point. I don’t know how important it is to convey that all files associated with the game will also be deleted. Maybe that’s implied?

  3. Harshad on May 22nd, 2007 1:40 pm

    Indeed, programmers tend to forget that most of their audience is non-tech-savvy. In this case, I would reword that as simpler sentence:

    “Delete all games?” to which the options can be “Yes” and “No”… I hope it is clear enough and concise too.

    Thanks for blogging my photo too.

  4. matej on May 22nd, 2007 1:50 pm

    Yes, I thought of the shorter version, but was sort of keen on the separation of explanation and question. But I agree, it would be simpler just to have everything in a short self-explanatory and undestandable question.

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