Does anyone know the proper way to write Repeat (as in the repeat button on an iPod)? I've been trying to search online for manuals of style on technical writing. Found a few things, but kind of ambiguous. Should I just capitalize, put it in quotes, italicize or what? The exact sentence is in a line of dialog: "You should leave it on Repeat tonight."
It should be just a normal word - that's not even a technical thing. "Repeat" is a verb too, after all.
technically, it could probably be in " " [or ' ' since it's within dialog here] but i see that as optional in this case...
I think in that case, it's such a common term that most people will get what you mean right away without any special fontery of punctuation.
The iPad user manual treats functions as Capitals. i.e., "To schedule quiet hours, allow specific people to call, or allow repeated FaceTime calls to ring through, go to Settings." And... "Allow persistant callers to ring through: Turn on Repeated Calls. If the same caller (based on their FaceTime ID) calls you twice within three minutes, iPad will ring." Google "iPad manual, PDF" if you like.
Maybe, but the iPad is called the "iPad", so I'm not convinced its manual is a reliable guide to conventional English capitalisation.
That's really a (snide?) nipick, because iPad is a trademark, and the capitalization of a trademark should be retained.
I agree that the capitalisation of iPad should be retained, but it indicates that Apple plays with capitalisation. Actually as somebody who writes technical reports for a living, capitalisation is a constant battle for me, because most of the other engineers want to capitalise any word they think relates to an important concept. I will only capitalise "project plan" if it's part of the title of a document, but most of the other engineers will capitalise every use of it, and quite possibly every use of "plan" ("We will develop a Plan for managing the Project..."). If challenged they can't give any reason for the capitalisation other than it feeling "right", but my documents then get criticised for following standard capitalisation rules. It's heading towards the German system of capitalising all nouns. Because of that habit, which seems to be common among engineers, I wouldn't take any equipment manual as any indication whatsoever of whether "repeat" should be capitalised.
It looks like Sony capitalizes EVERYTHING when referring to a function in their "Blu-ray Disc™/ DVD Home Theatre System" manual, however, when referring to a Sub Menu item they cap only the first letter of the word as in "Sound Mode", in this example. The "X/x" are actually up and down arrows.
Companies have certain house rules, and I don't think they should be the guidelines to consult when it comes to fiction. If it were me, I wouldn't capitalize "repeat" because it's a normal word like "play" or "pause."
