Formatting and description of UI elements needs to be consistent in docs (suggesting a style guide?)

[aronr]

At present, we inconsistently use a variety of formatting and quoting styles, including bold, italics, and double quotation marks, to represent onscreen UI elements on web pages and desktop and mobile apps. A few examples of these elements:

• Literal text (text labels)
• Text entry fields
• Menus
• Buttons

We also currently use a variety of formatting styles for:

• Important notes
• Tips
• Material that might be represented in sidebars or bordered blocks, when available in markup richer than Markdown's
• Headers at various levels (e.g. starting major headers at the h4 level rather than, say, the h1 or h2 level, probably because the former are seen as too large or prominent)

Finally, we use different types of textual description for buttons, items in menus, and the like. (One trivial example: "Click OK" v. "Click the OK button")

As a reader attempting to follow a set of instructions, it's often quite valuable to be presented with a consistently-applied set of formatting styles and textual descriptions within a single document, and - ideally - across multiple documents within a body of related documentation.

All this suggests that we might prepare a style guide, as part of, or to accompany, any "How to contribute" documentation that we prepare. But in advance of that, we might at least be consistent in our use of formatting and description of these UI elements within any individual document.