How should important terms be emphasized in documentation?

Posted by John Rasch on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by John Rasch
Published on 2010-05-06T17:15:56Z Indexed on 2010/05/06 17:18 UTC
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Software will often introduce and formalize concepts that may have ambiguous definitions in the real world. For example, in an attendance tracking system, an Occurrence refers to an Excused Absence, an Unexcused Absence, or a Tardy.

In technical documentation (both in helper text and in user guides, etc), should these concepts be proper nouns, and as such, should they be capitalized in usage?

In other words, which of the following examples is more appropriate:

After an Occurrence has been created, it may be converted into an Excused Absence once the Approval Form has been uploaded.

or

After an occurrence has been created, it may be converted into an excused absence once the approval form has been uploaded.

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