I'm having one of those mornings where I'm questioning all the things.
I prototyped a table where a boolean column was labeled with "Has Alert." This means the row is associated with an action item.
I'm the only native English speaker at my job, and this label looked funny to my colleagues. Now it looks funny to me!
I started to think about boolean columns, and I reasoned that there are broadly two types, those of Being and those of Existence1:
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Being: The row "is" or "is not" a certain way -
Existence: The row "has" or "does not have" a property
For Being columns I usually omit the "is" in the label. E.g., if something can "be finished," I'd just write "Finished" in the column header.
For Existence columns, I'm not so sure. I thus invite you to overthink this with me 😁
How would you label an existence column? What feels natural to you?
Top comments (4)
I usually prefer the approach with prefixes as it is later on easier to scan through.
So,
isCompletedovercompletedandhasRoleover any other form e.g.containsRole(although a prefix, it is a bit longer), ...When I see these kinds of prefixes it is a clear indicator that we are talking about booleans; whereas for "completed" we need to parse the word then conclude the type.
Yes! Totally agree in computer-land, but in this case I'm talking about a table in a UI.
I think that - if you want to - you can rephrase all your "existence" properties into "being" states.
What I mean is, "has alert" is the same as "is pending operator approval" or something. Maybe a little terser than that, but you get the idea.
Yes! Seems like you can swap the mode of expression by using the adjective instead of the noun (and vice versa).
Like:
I guess in my case it's like
Great point!