ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Kevin Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Ilya Haykinson <haykinson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It's fairly common in English to write menu bar as two words, even as other
> bars (side, tool) are frequently written as a single word.
>
> I don't think our manual should change spelling conventions for the sake of
> consistency. English is not a consistent language, generally, anyways.

The primary reason our style guide recommends "menubar" over "menu
bar" is to be consistent with the GNOME documentation style guide:
<http://developer.gnome.org/gdp-style-guide/stable/gnome-glossary-desktop.html.en>.

Having said that, the "menubar" referred to in the GNOME documentation
style guide is the one attached to each individual window (containing
the File, Edit, View, etc. menus).

If we're using "menubar" to refer to the "top bar" or "top panel" or
what have you, then we can consider other spelling options (two words,
capitalization, etc.).

We do however need to make some decisions with regard to all of those
terms: which are capitalized, which aren't; which terms are typed as
two words, which as one word; and so forth. Then we can add those to
our style guide and ensure that we're consistent throughout our
manual.  These decisions should be coordinated with the Ubuntu Docs
team and anyone writing user-facing documentation and UI text from
Canonical.

--Kevin