Learn English – What’s better: enter or input

headlineseword-choice

Some time ago I've been showing my computer program to my teacher. Suddenly he began to laugh pointing at 'Please enter your name: ' statement. I tried to figure out what was wrong. He said it's better to use input instead of enter and the sentence sounds funny otherwise.

Here they're defining the word input using the word enter.

To enter data into the computer.

What's better to use in such sentences as 'Please (input/enter) your name: 'input or enter?

Best Answer

Easy-to-use computer programs tend to have very short user instructions. Short prompts are often better than polite prompts.

Joel Spolsky (our host) has written an article about this. Scroll down to the part that has the pictures, titled "In fact, users don't read anything."

In the original poster's example, I would label the text entry box as
Name: