×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

(OP)
Hello, everyone.

I am working at an engineering company that deals with power transformers, breakers, generators, etc. Needless to say, mistakes can kill people.

Our current Notes, Cautions, and Warnings format is blocky, hard to read, and, I believe, less effective than it could be.

But, before I change it, I need to find out if there is an official standard for publications in this field. Maybe our format is already the standard, and in that case I'll leave it as it is (although I would think it's a bad standard).

Can anyone refer me to a resource? If you have access to an IEEE publication covering this, could you share it with me? I don't have a membership, too expensive, but I want to do this right.

Thanks.

--Nancy

RE: Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

Hi Nancy,

Not sure where you're based as your post doesn't say - legal requirements for safety signage will vary depending on your geographical location!

In the UK the relevant legislation is the Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 which are captured by BS5378 parts 1 to 3. See the following link for a summary

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg184.htm

Aha, sorry penny drops...do you mean to put into user documentation?

Hope this helps, HM

No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - William of Occam

RE: Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

If the font is hard to read, I would change it ... and to Hell with any arbitrary standard. Safety should be paramount, not adherence to a faulty standard.

RE: Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

However, adherance to a standard is possibly more important to bean counters/lawyers.

I know the MOD in the UK had standard formats for warnings in their user manuals.

Perhaps if you can tell us not just your geographic location but also industry someone can help.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

RE: Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

(OP)
Hi, Hamish. Yes, sorry, I should have been more clear! I am writing user manuals for test equipment in the US.

--Nancy

RE: Standard for notes, cautions, warnings?

Use common warning symbols to appropriately highlight your text.  The text itself should be in clear font sizes.  As far as the standard goes, I'm not sure there is one that applies to all situations.  You may wish to reference UL texts if they cover some of this for your type of equipment.

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources