RE: Screen readers and full stops

Many thanks to Simon and Phill for their feedback on this question. It sounds
like some user agents can be set to detect ends of lines even without periods,
and others may not. I agree that fundamentally the software that reads
information should be set to accommodate the user's needs, and that introducing
new ways of writing just to try and make it work for all might be tricky and
ill-advised.

Just to clarify, I wasn't considering putting the period at the end of each
bullet point, just the final one. Might this be a good compromise for those
users whose equipment is not set to impose the full stop? That way, at the very
least they will get a pause at the end of the stream of bullets, if not after
each individual bullet. I know that proponents of strict grammar might say that
all lists should be punctuated as if they were in their longer, multi-clause
form, which would include the final period anyway.

I tend to favour only the bare minimum, especially for low-literacy readers, and
am happy to drop that final period if it will only make things more complicated
for most users.

Thanks again for the help, and for any further input.

Michelle

Received on Tuesday, 14 August 2001 12:34:17 UTC