Timeline for "New" vs. "Create"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 23, 2014 at 15:26 | comment | added | RJHunter | Another angle (which I haven't seen discussed here) is how the user perceives their work. As a particularly extreme example: A family record system I saw had a button for "Create Child". That made perfect sense to the software developers, but was a bit weird for someone who just wanted to record the details of the child that already existed. | |
| May 21, 2014 at 12:53 | comment | added | Franchesca | @O.R.Mapper We tend to see short words as sort of ideograms though, rather than as words comprised of letters that are verbs or adjectives (think of those silly "count the F's tests you saw when you were a kid). | |
| May 21, 2014 at 12:24 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | Interesting. While skimming the list in your answer, I immediately thought: "Clearly, the left one (with Create) is the better choice as all of the commands are imperiative verbs; the right version creates a clash by mixing adjectives and verbs and hence takes longer for me to process." I was surprised that your answer comes to the opposite conclusion. | |
| May 21, 2014 at 7:33 | comment | added | Franchesca | @AJMansfield What about "Collage" :P | |
| May 20, 2014 at 20:42 | comment | added | AJMansfield | Now we just need a word starting with a C that we can substitute for "Paste"... | |
| May 20, 2014 at 17:19 | comment | added | Phil Perry | Note that one set of action verbs is preferred in the Windows world, and a different set in the Mac world (e.g., exit vs. quit). I believe this has been discussed extensively elsewhere on this site. | |
| May 20, 2014 at 13:53 | comment | added | Ruslan | FWIW, in Russian localization the "New" menu entries and toolbar buttons are "Создать", i.e. "create". So, localization is not much of a problem — one can always choose a better option for given language. | |
| May 20, 2014 at 13:47 | comment | added | Pierre Arlaud | And who's to say these are verbs and not nouns? :-) jk | |
| May 20, 2014 at 13:25 | comment | added | Izhaki | I like the 'C' argument (although in practice you should consider the brain also 'reads' the last letter). One argument against though - with New you are mixing an adjective with verbs. | |
| May 20, 2014 at 13:19 | comment | added | virtualnobi | Sure German has "Neu" as an adjective, as has English, also implying a <something> after it. But for some reason, one of which may be the fact that there are several inflected forms of "neu" (neues, neue, neuer, depending on grammatical gender of following noun), "Neu" definitely does not work for creating objects, in a German UI. | |
| May 20, 2014 at 13:10 | comment | added | JAB | @virtualnobi "New" tends to imply a "<Something>" after it, and in some case has it explicitly (e.g. "New Tab", "New Document", etc.); most languages should have a similar construct for that usage of New, and even if not there would be plenty of ways to localize (though that would end up with similar discussions as this one for such languages). | |
| May 20, 2014 at 13:09 | comment | added | Franchesca | @virtualnobi Different languages will have different distributions of character frequency. (A fun way to look at it might be which starting letters have the best scrabble score?) | |
| May 20, 2014 at 13:01 | comment | added | virtualnobi | "New" seems to be a perfect choice for English, but it does not translate into other languages. | |
| May 20, 2014 at 12:47 | history | answered | Franchesca | CC BY-SA 3.0 |