Natural command names and initial learning: a study of text-editing terms
Communications of the ACM
The natural language of interactive systems
Communications of the ACM
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The nature of the command terms used by computer systems is an important issue affecting human computer interaction. As such, this area has received considerable attention recently (e.g., Ehrenreich, 1982, 1985; Grudin & Barnard, 1984; Landauer, Galotti, & Hartwell, 1983; Landauer & Galotti, 1984; Ledgard, Whiteside, Singer, & Seymour, 1980; Scapin, 1981, 1982). The issues addressed by these researchers are particularly important in light of the larger number of computer users who have little or no knowledge of the underlying logic of either the hardware or the software that they are using. As a group, these users often believe that the system should be "fast and easy to use". One area in which this expectation is especially widespread is that of wordprocessing packages. Although wordprocessing packages generally share the same basic functional purposes, the specific command terms that each uses for a particular function are generally not the same or even similar. There are even instances where different versions of the same wordprocessing package have different commands and/or functions than previous versions. Therefore, not only is the issue of the ease of learning and use of commands important, but also the issue of how these commands might be changed (either across different levels of user expertise or different versions of the software) so that there is maximum transfer of training from old commands to new commands.