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Almost without exception, if you are writing a program, you will need to pay at least a little attention to how it uses text. There are, believe it or not, right ways and wrong ways, and while most of the guidelines for text might seem trivial, paying attention to what seem like niggling little details is what sets a good program apart from the rest.
Above all else mentioned in this chapter, use language appropriate for your audience -- most of the time, this means avoiding technical terms -- and be both clear and concise.
Perhaps the place where you should use text the most is in error messages. They should appear as seldom as possible because you anticipated and handled as many error conditions as possible and then tried to blow it up real good, right? ;) When your program can't handle a particular error, the error message given to the user should do the following: