Unambiguous text
Level: Foundational
Explain ambiguous text or provide an unambiguous alternative.
Methods
Determine if the text has:
- Non-literal text, such as idioms, metaphors, similes, and sarcasm.
- Abbreviations or acronyms that are not explained on first use.
- Ambiguous numbers such as date formatting that can have different meanings in different cultures.
- Text that leaves out letters or diacritics needed to read the words phonetically, such as in Arabic or Hebrew.
If the text is ambiguous, explain it or provide an alternative using one of the techniques in the techniques section.
Techniques
- Author technique (General): Explain the meaning in brackets after the first use.
- Author technique (General): Explain the meaning in a consecutive block of text.
- Author technique (General): Include a link to a glossary, pop-up, or tooltip.
- Author technique (General): Use translation tools to help identify ambiguous text during back translation.
- Author technique (HTML): Include text that explains the meaning using an abbreviation
<abbr>element.
This guideline will include definitions and examples in English of common types of non-literal text. This guideline will also link to examples of non-literal text in a wide variety of languages, including Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Japanese, and Russian.