Re: Word-a-Day: cancel, stop

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2008-08-06 at 21:12 +0100, Djihed Afifi wrote:
> There are quite a few words that are related to terminating a program.
> 
> http://wiki.arabeyes.org/techdict:Abort
> 
> "Abort  : Close  : Quit  : Exit  : Kill  : Terminate  : End  : Finish : Cancel"

Abort probably doesn't belong in user-facing text, though I'm
willing to entertain suggestions for places where it's called
for.

Close is for windows and documents, not operations.

Quit and Exit are for applications.  I expect that discussion
to involve an entirely arbitrary decision being made after
much bickering about what flavor the sky is.

Kill and Terminate are just terrible words, but when they're
used, they're used on processes.

End is a nice word without any baggage, and can be used when
describing what Cancel or Stop do, as I've done.

Finish traditionally has only been used for assistants and
the like.  There's been a recent push to use them on some
(but for some reason, not all) instant-apply dialogs.  I'm
not touching that one until the usability team does.

--
Shaun