Technical Writing Tip for CLI Commands

Saw this nifty documentation idea in the Cisco® Smart Business Architecture (SBA) guide today.

Commands to enter at a CLI appear as follows:

configure terminal

Long commands that line wrap are underlined. Enter them as one command:

wrr-queue random-detect max-threshold 1 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 

The idea of using underlining to indicated that a CLI command has line wrapped is really quite clever way of showing. Especially for Cisco IOS CLI, it’s quite difficult to know where the end of line or to quickly determine the proper syntax. This a line wrap for CLI can be quite damaging, especially for internal documentation.
You can find the guides at http://www.cisco.com/go/sba