Terminology

If this is your first encounter with a computer, you should take some time to learn the basics from its manual. If your computer didn’t come with an owner’s manual, many excellent books are now available on basic computer usage, often with insulting names like “Macintosh for Complete Morons” or “Windows for Blithering Idiots.” Despite such uninviting names, these books can be indispensable if you’ve never used a computer before. In any case, you should certainly familiarize yourself with your operating system, making sure that you understand important concepts such as pointing, clicking, double-clicking, dragging, and opening and closing windows.

This Finale book assumes that you know how to choose a command from a menu and how to navigate through a dialog box. In addition, be sure you’re familiar with the parts of a window, including the scroll bars, the title bar, the close button, and the sizable frame.

In many applications, including this one, you’re sometimes asked to -click (Mac: -click) something on the screen. That simply means that while pressing the (or ) key, you click the mouse button—then release both. Once you’ve mastered that principle, the meanings of -click and even --click should be clear.

Because Finale does some things that music programs have never done before, you’ll also be running into terms that will be new to you. You’ll be introduced to these terms as you go through the tutorials. But keep in mind that if you encounter an unfamiliar term while using the program, you can learn about it in the User Manual; just look up the dialog box or menu in which it appears.

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